Courses gave me vocabulary, shipping gave me judgment

I've been publishing things on the internet since December 2022, when I was 12. Games, tools, websites, most of them small, all of them on itch.io where strangers could find them. Since then I've also done the coursework properly: Harvard's CS50x, then a six-week Harvard summer program that came with an internship at a YC startup. So I've run both experiments on myself, and I have an opinion about which one teaches faster.

The courses were worth it, to be clear. CS50x taught me C and Python, and the most useful thing it gave me was vocabulary. Before it, I could sometimes make code work without being able to say why. After it, I could name what I was doing, which meant I could ask better questions and understand the answers I got. But naming things isn't the same as knowing which thing to build. No problem set ever asked me that.

Last summer I did HUVTSP, the Harvard Undergraduate Ventures Tech Summer Program. Six weeks, seminars from Harvard faculty, and a placement with a venture-backed startup. Mine was SalesPatriot (YC W25), where I worked as a business strategy intern. I did market and strategy analysis and worked up growth and marketing ideas. Then I presented my recommendations directly to the founder.

That last part is the one I'd point at. Presenting to a real founder is a different sport than presenting to a class. In a classroom, everyone in the room is paid or graded to pay attention, and the worst outcome is a lower grade. A founder owes you nothing. If the analysis is soft, they stop listening, politely, and your ideas go nowhere. You check your numbers differently when the person across the table might actually act on them.

Shipping to strangers does the same thing at a smaller scale, and it's available to anyone with an internet connection. When a stranger downloads your game, they don't grade you on effort. It holds their attention or it doesn't, and they tell you by leaving. Years of that taught me judgment, which is the quieter skill of knowing what matters in the thing you're making and what nobody will ever notice. I haven't found a way to get judgment from a syllabus. I've looked.

So my position: take the course, then ship something before you feel ready, ideally the same month. My whole back catalog from age 12 onward is still up on itch.io, rough edges included, and the next thing I make will go up there too, probably before it deserves to.