Learning to code

I first started thinking about learning full-stack web development seriously when our only tech guy and founding team member quit our bootstrapped business to pursue a higher salary. He joined us as an enthusiastic junior developer (not much experience with anything really but we had to take what we got). He spent almost the entire tenure (~6 months) skilling up and we were happy about it because we had all sorts of plans for building a plethora of enterprise products once he was ready. So when one fine morning, before actually building anything truly valuable for us, he delivered the news that he had decided to move on, it was a major setback. We could neither afford to hire another junior developer and wait for them to be ready to build complex web applications nor hire a senior developer.

It became apparent to me that to build a successful tech product, I must learn to build it myself as -

• None of my few techie friends was seriously interested in entrepreneurial ventures.
• Looking for a technical co-founder in a stranger does not work.
• Difficult to hire and retain good developers in a bootstrapped business.

And, most importantly

• I wanted the freedom to just build what I want.