You should spend your time coding. That’s what I did. People told me not to, but I did it anyway. I got shit grades at school but I got a lot better at coding.

You should spend your time coding. That’s what I did. People told me not to, but I did it anyway. I got shit grades at school but I got a lot better at coding. In the end, grades didn’t mean shit but the fact I had a lot more practice at coding than everyone else (while they did homework I did coding) had a lot to do with what job I was able to get. Don’t worry about getting a coding job yet. You should build your own personal projects as much as possible while you are still unhireable for reasons you don’t control (age). Doing your own projects will help you learn how to structure large things. See how big of a program you can get to before the code starts to feel like shit. The more you practice, the better you’ll get at structuring code in a way that allows you to grow it a lot. This is a skill you can practice, and you should do that now to maximize your competitive advantage once you can work.