One of the biggest mistakes I made after receiving my SSN was applying for credit cards too quickly. I remember the moment clearly. I had just received my SSN in the mail and immediately applied for a credit card from my bank, Wells Fargo. I got rejected right away. After that, I kept trying with different cards, thinking one of them would approve me. Instead, every application ended in rejection.

What I did not understand at the time is that even though I now had an SSN, I had no credit history. My profile was essentially blank. No credit activity, no repayment history, and no financial behavior tied to my identity yet. I had not even waited for my first paycheck to be deposited, which would have at least started building some basic financial activity.

On top of that, every application triggers a hard inquiry from credit bureaus. A hard inquiry is when a lender checks your credit report as part of their decision process. These inquiries can slightly affect your credit score and they remain on your record for a period of time. When you have multiple hard inquiries but no credit history or active accounts, it can make you look like a higher risk applicant. From a lender’s perspective, it may appear as if you are urgently seeking credit without any proven repayment behavior.

By the time I understood this, the damage was already done. I had to spend several months rebuilding and waiting before I could qualify for better cards. Even now, I still do not have my ideal credit card.

A better approach for beginners is to start with entry level or student credit cards. Options from issuers like Capital One and Discover are often designed for people with limited or no credit history. Approval is generally easier, and they are structured to help you build credit gradually. That said, it is still important to do your own research and choose what fits your situation.

Another important tip is to be intentional when applying. If your friends already use the same card, some banks offer referral bonuses. These can sometimes range from 100 to 500 dollars. It is a simple way to gain extra value while helping someone you know, as long as you are applying responsibly.

Getting your SSN and first job is a big milestone. The key is not to rush the next steps. Building credit is a slow process, and doing it correctly from the beginning saves a lot of time and frustration later on.

If this is you, congratulations! You are a distinguished member of the “Developer can’t name stuff” club.

Sharing from my personal experience, often when I get an idea of building something that definitely will be the next thing you will target while grinding Leetcode 24/7; I can’t seem to write a single line of code without deciding on a cool name first.

“Why?” you ask? Duh, Nobody wants to put in work on a folder named “New_Uber_Idea”. It has to sound something cool like “Drillster, Cashari, X69 Carster” or something to grab your attention.

And because of not being able to settle with a name, often I find myself wasting time just coming up with names that basically sound like the Tesla baby.

If only there was a way to overcome this mental block. What do you guys do when starting something new? I would be glad to learn.

Installing ChromeOS Flex was very straightforward, get the ChromeOS Chrome extension, make a live drive using it, then boot into it and boom, It’s ready to be used. I had a handful of Operating Systems before but I didn’t know what I should be expecting from this one. It’s popular in high school in the United States and all but it isn’t so popular from where I come from. However, the main selling point I saw in ChromeOS for aspiring developers is its Linux Development Environment.

1. Familiarity and Ease of Use

   If you have been using Windows, ChromeOS will make you feel right at home with the entire layout. The taskbar, start menu, calendar, etc. are placed right where you would expect them to be. Also, the individual app windows also share the same layout. ChromeOS Flex is basically an entire operating system based on Chrome the web browser. Since more than a quarter of the world already is familiar with Chrome and Google services, it is extremely easy to use ChromeOS.

2. Development Environment

   ChromeOS Flex is an entire operating system on its own, however, it has full support for Linux. It takes just one click to create a Linux drive and run it from within ChromeOS itself. The tools and programs installed in the Linux drive easily interoperate with ChromeOS Flex, making it extremely easy to get both Linux’s versatility along ChromeOS’s ease of use.

3. Setup time

   It only took me around 30 minutes to completely set up my ChromeOS with all essential dev tools like VS Code, NodeJS, Git, PHP, composer etc. Since it’s literally running Debian, I had zero issues setting everything up.

In conclusion, ChromeOS Flex is like a transformer. In its base form, it is just Google Chrome running as an Operating System along with some Googley features, however, upon enabling the Linux Development Environment, it is a powerhouse with all the tools you could ever ask for. This makes it the perfect operating system for people who are looking to use a simple OS for their normal tasks but switch into pro mode once they are locked in to do some development.

Schoolhouse

Schoolhouse is a non-profit that helps students prep for the SAT and other services for free, even for tutoring. Funded by Sal Khan (Yes, he is the same guy who founded Khan Academy), Schoolhouse has tutors who have students like you who have scores of 700 or higher in either R&W or Maths. Be sure to have a look and see if it helps you.

However, popular solutions like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 are not free to use. So here are some of the solutions that have a free tier for professional emails.

1. Zoho Mail

   

   Whether you have heard about Zoho or not, it is undeniable that its growing in the workspace market. Lucky for us, we can leverage the "Forever Free Plan" which offers free email hosting for 5 users with a 5 GB storage limit with a 25 MB attachment limit. You can map your DNS records very easily in one click and you are good to go.

Keep in mind that you have to scroll a bit to find the option to choose free tier. So be sure to look for it quite well.

2. Twilio SendGrid

Twilio SendGrid, previously just "SendGrid", is a popular bulk email marketing service which provides great APIs to work with. It can be also used to create a custom business email for free. However, it is not as easy as using Zoho but If you are a tech enthusiast, figuring things out should be a fun little side project for you. You can also integrate your address with Gmail or any other email client which enables you to send and receive emails comfortably without any learning curve.

To not get stuck in Tutorial Hell, start learning from a non-linear approach. Here is an example. If you're learning a new language, for example, let's take JavaScript. Take notes of what the language's main purpose is and how you intend to use it. Decide what sort of site you want to build, and decide its features and other components. Now instead of watching a 3-hour course in a linear way. Search for specific things you need to complete the component. For example, if you were building a To-Do list, the first thing might be how to get the form input in a variable and search that. Then after you got your answer and implemented it, Now you may want to add a new HTML element in the document to display the value in the variable, Search how to do that. Following this method, you will have a project ready and you will also have a grasp of how each component works.

Surprise, Now you know how to take inputs, manipulate the DOM and event listeners. With this approach, you learn what you need to progress. Watch tutorials by cutting them into byte size (pun intended) and understand them before proceeding. Remember that you can always learn at your own pace.

Fun fact, This tutorial of escaping tutorial hell can also be a tutorial hell.

Recently, different programming languages have been rising in popularity and crowned as the best language by people. With the growing trend of languages like Python and JavaScript, PHP has been hidden from the spotlight. There doesn't seem to be much talk about PHP nowadays.

There are a lot of memes regarding PHP on the internet that troll the language for its unpredictability, sloppy syntax and much more. But considering the fact that over 70% of the internet pages are powered by PHP, it is quite wrong to state that PHP is dead.

Furthermore, since PHP is open source, it contains a lot of potential for improvement. With its large community of developers, you can quickly get solutions for your errors.

At the end of the day, PHP is actually not bad and worth a try if you're getting started or just exploring new languages. Show Elephpant some love.

Programming basically is instructing computers how to do stuff. Interest in learning to program is at its peak. While you may have heard statements like "Learn Python first" a lot. It is actually not the best way to get started.

You see, Learning to program is not just dependent on a language. It's the way of problem-solving that we actually learn. You will learn multiple languages as you grow.

The reason why learning Python may not be the best choice as the first language is because of its syntax. It's not that it's bad, it is quite different as presumably easy compared to others. There are no semicolons and curly braces and stuff, It's all indentation that does the job. Once you learn Python since its syntax doesn't match with other languages, you might have a hard time coping.

But that being said, Python is still the best language if you want to explore programming. The other language I would suggest starting off with so that you will have an easier time in future is C. C is actually quite a pain to deal with if you do not have a clear understanding of its syntax and the way it works, but if you learn it first, switching languages will be a breeze. For example, if you learn C, you will be somewhat familiar with JavaScript, PHP, C++, Java etc.

Be sure to experiment with different languages to find your sweet spot and master the language.