This man i really respect so much texted me last night. That he is ready to start coding. And he Just needed direction.
And honestly... I paused.
Because in 2026 the answer isn't as straightforward
as it was 3 years ago.
Do I tell him HTML and CSS like everyone says?
AI generates clean HTML in seconds now.
Do I tell him pick a framework?
He hasn't written a line of code yet.
Do I tell him just use no code tools?
That feels like cheating him out of real understanding.
So i just told him to download VSCode for now, nothing else, don't overthink the setup.
Then install Prettier and Copilot extensions.
That's it, that's his entire setup for now.
For sites i told him to try The Odin Project,
it's free and project based so he's actually building things not just watching videos and feeling productive.
MDN Web Docs when he needs to really understand something properly, not W3Schools. And
JavaScript.info when he gets to JavaScript, honestly the best free resource on the language i've seen.
But the real thing i told him was this “learn HTML and CSS not to master them,
but to understand what AI is generating for you. cause if you can't read the output
you won't catch the mistakes.
then JavaScript. the language itself, not a framework yet. logic is still logic, AI doesn't change that.
then learn how to work with AI properly.
prompting, reviewing, debugging what it gives you. that's actually the skill in 2026.”
the goal isn't memorizing syntax anymore.
it's understanding systems well enough
to know when something is wrong.
guys what would you have told him?