Go Beyond the Tutorials | Ben Lapidus' Blog

At one point, I had calls nearly weekly with students at my alma mater looking for advice (and referrals, usually). What courses should they take? What tutorials should they follow? What technologies should they learn? And my answer wasn't notably unique -- just build something!

This isn't me complaining. I love chatting with folks entering the industry. Hit me up!

Then, I would usually point them to this site, for two main reasons. First, in the spirit of "the medium is the message," a personal website is a fitting thing for a developer to have and maintain. Second, it is just the abundance and variety of topics you’ll learn; distribution, marketing, devops, data, analytics, architecture, and so much more.

So, this is my long-winded answer to "why should I build something" in a digestible list form.

The Soft and Squishy

My dad read my post about beating United Healthcare and taught me that medical debt cannot impact your credit score. (Might be untrue as of recently? I’m not an expert...)
My interviewer-turned-coworker stumbled on my post about spending $26.95 and we had a sweet little nostalgic moment before we'd even met in person.
The dog behaviorist that I work with featured my puppy one-year review in her newsletter.
At least five people have sent me bean content after reading my bean takes. Five! People have bean thinking about me. 🫘
I've kept in touch with friends who are far away. Talking about ins-and-outs is more fun than yet another “what’s up?"
I had a lovely conversation with my friends about boredom. The sort of conversation that dives a little deeper than pleasantries, which I find refreshing.
I shared my media diet and my cousin told me about one of her favorite podcasts. Another friend sent me a stellar TV show recommendation.
I'm growing a mailing list. (I'll write about my thoughts on the power and moat of distribution soon, probably... maybe)
Developing the ability to actually finish what I start. Like many, I am plagued with infinite ideas. When one project gets too hard, it’s easy to throw it away and start on a new thing. But, this has been a valuable space to maintain systems over time.

Hard Skills

I learned Apple Shortcuts so I could auto-deploy blog posts from my phone.
GitHub Actions! I wrote my first action to auto-deploy updates so I didn’t need to SSH into my remote server every time I need to make a change.
ISR rendering strategy. I heard about it at work, but in the business world, it can be risky to try new patterns without a solid understanding. So, this is my practice area. Give the page a refresh and feel how snappy it is.

The fun thing is that I didn’t set out to learn any of this. But, when you build things, you encounter problems. Solving those problems is far more educational, fun, and fulfilling than a tutorial. Plus, that’s not even considering all the wonderful things that will emerge from the community you can create.