Welcome to the graveyard. Every failed project, every 3am production fire, every "I should have known better" moment lives here. Learn from them.
You install Next.js before understanding how a server works. You use React before knowing what the DOM is. You deploy to Vercel before running anything locally.
The framework hides the complexity — until it doesn't. Then you're debugging something you never understood in the first place. Walk before you run. Section 01 exists for a reason.
"I'll just rewrite this real quick." Three hours later, nothing works and you can't get back to what you had. Always create a branch before refactoring. Always commit working code before changing it. git stash is your friend. The worst feeling in coding isn't a bug — it's knowing you had working code and threw it away.
"TypeScript is annoying." Until you ship a function that expects a number and gets a string, and your app silently returns NaN to every user. Types aren't bureaucracy — they're documentation that the compiler enforces. You don't need to go full TypeScript on day one, but at minimum, type your API responses and function signatures.
Stack Overflow, ChatGPT, GitHub repos — copy, paste, it works, ship it. Until it doesn't. If you don't understand why code works, you can't debug it when it breaks. Before pasting anything, read it line by line. What does each variable do? What happens with edge cases? The five minutes you spend understanding saves five hours of debugging.
A todo app doesn't need microservices. A landing page doesn't need a headless CMS. A contact form doesn't need a message queue. Build the simplest thing that works.
You can always add complexity later — but you can't easily remove it. Every abstraction you add is debt you'll pay interest on.
What happens when the input is empty? What about a 10,000-character name? What if the API returns an error? What if the user double-clicks submit? These aren't hypotheticals — they're Tuesday. Test the happy path AND the sad path. Your users are creative, impatient, and using devices you've never heard of. Plan for chaos.
It's 5pm Friday. You've been coding all week. The feature is done. You're feeling confident. Don't. Deploy it Monday. Every production fire that's ever ruined a weekend started with "it's a small change, I'll just push it." Your users won't notice a two-day delay. Your family will notice if you're debugging at 2am on Saturday.
const API_KEY = "sk-abc123..." — congratulations, you just published your secrets to GitHub. Bots scrape public repos for API keys within seconds.
Use .env files. Add .env to .gitignore. Use your platform's secret management. This isn't a mistake you make twice — because the first time can cost you thousands.
You spent two weeks building a beautiful dashboard with charts and filters. Nobody uses it. You added dark mode, light mode, and a custom theme builder. Nobody cares. Talk to users first. Build the minimum viable feature. Ship it. Get feedback. Iterate. The graveyard is full of perfect features that solved problems nobody had.
AI is a power tool — not a replacement for understanding. It generates code, but it doesn't know your architecture. It writes functions, but it doesn't understand your business logic. It's fast, but it's confidently wrong sometimes.
Use AI to accelerate, not to replace thinking. The vibe coders who win are the ones who know enough to verify what AI gives them.
EmbedAI handles the hard parts — RAG, vector search, LLM orchestration — so you can embed AI into your product without the infrastructure headache.