👋 Hi there! I am Bilal, the creator of Codeguage. Here's a little insight into my own little, humble journey to founding Codeguage way back in 2018.
My story
Self-taught.
Without a uni degree.
Passionate to help others.
Entry into programming
Around early 2010s, I was in grade 7 and we had Information Technology as a subject. In the curriculum for it, there was something called HTML. When the time came to learn it, we went to the lab and coded a basic HTML page. This was a rejuvenating experience for me. For the very first time I felt I had gotten control of a computer. I enjoyed coding in HTML a lot. Like seriously, a lot!
To take things a step further, in the assigned text book, the chapter on HTML contained a website's link at the end for those curious to learn more about it. I followed that link and that was the day I met my first love in life — web development. Here, I had made up my mind that I'll be learning more about this markup language and whatever logically follows it. This marked the very beginning of my journey into programming.
Learning, learning and learning
As is the norm even today, I began with HTML, followed by CSS, and then JavaScript. Each avenue was a scintillating experience of its own. Soon, I began playing around with my creativity, building all sorts of webpages. Later, I even learned PHP and MySQL and tapped into creating web applications.
However, I was in a learning mess, navigating through bulky, low-quality courses and failing to make sense (for days) of concepts that were extremely basic. I was also moving really slow in my coding sessions. I didn't feel much confident as a web developer. Everything seemed fragile. But why? Weak fundamentals.
“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle
Realizing learning issues and founding Codeguage
With time, I started to realize that the reason behind my lack of confidence and inability to code fluently was weak fundamentals. So, I started polishing them and making sure I understood the fundamentals of topics, not "hacks" and "how-tos". With time, things started to come together and I soon got the much awaited confidence in programming.
But at the same time, I strongly felt that I needed to give back to the community by creating a resource where I teach these fundamentals in my own way. I truly wanted to help others not fall into the same learning traps that I fell into. And so, I went on to create that one resource, all by myself.
On the very first day of August, 2018, I launched Codeguage with just one course (on JavaScript) and one tutorial (on image carousels). It took me many days and nights to make those two things; after all, it was my very first experience of creating courses and writing technical content. Later I even added a blog to the website and then more courses and tutorials.
College years, red percentiles
While all these developments were happening, the second year of my A Levels at college was about to commence. I had to make a choice then and there: either devote all my time to college and occasionally work on the website or occasionally devote my time to college and work on the website full time. Guess what, I chose the latter!
The two years of my college could be discussed for an entire day or so, but to keep things short, I failed many college exams. My percentiles were consistently poor. But none of that mattered because I had a bigger thing to achieve in life than those college exams — create a resource that could revolutionize the way programming was taught.
“Like what you do, and then you will do your best.”
— Katherine Johnson
Explosion of knowledge, intro to books
After getting into competitive programming via a contest (specifically, Canadian Computing Contest) held at college, I came to appreciate the vastness of computer science. Until then, I was only confined to web development but this event marked a turning point in my journey.
I soon started collecting numerous books on various topics in computer science, including algorithms, data structures, discrete mathematics, programming languages, web development, and much much more. I was so curious to know more that I call this era an "explosion" of knowledge. I literally had gigabytes worth of books on my computer, waiting to be read!
How many books I read from this point on to date? Easily over a hundred! Seriously! My sheer passion and curiosity for knowing more and more about computer science never ever allowed me to apply the brakes — I was always on a roll! This is the time when I truly built real skills and rigor in programming and a diverse set of other disciplines.
Restructuring of Codeguage
When I founded Codeguage, my core idea was comprehensive courses. Literally every single concept was covered. I thought this was the right way to teach (and learn). Later I transitioned Codeguage into a subscription-based platform, bringing in quizzes and exercises. But soon, once again, another transition was lined up — this time going all in on "practice" material. I stopped creating courses because my focus was now solely on producing practice material.
But I never ever stopped self-analyzing my direction of teaching and whether it really aligned with the modern-day demand. Luckily, this continuous analysis bore its fruit when I noticed that "short" content was growing popular on every single social platform because of the reducing attention span. Added to this, I also noticed that to be able to program, you don't need to know every single thing — just enough to get going.
And so, I took a long break of a handful of months and started creating courses again, from scratch, but not the same, lengthy ones I created before. Instead, I put my entire focus on "mini" courses — ones that would complete in under a week! No need to devote days or months in learning.
All these years of learning and teaching culminated in a "mini" idea.
The only question that remains is: Are you ready to get started today?