Okay, so last month I got really curious about John Maloney – you know, that guy behind Scratch? Kept hearing his name pop up in tech circles. Figured there must be something solid in how he built his career, right? Decided to break down his steps and actually try walking in those shoes myself, step-by-step.
Step 1: Diving Into The Basics, Like Really Diving
First thing I did? Went back to absolute fundamentals. Maloney started with coding languages before jumping into big projects, so I cleared my weekend and spent 8 hours straight just grinding Python tutorials – no fancy frameworks, just raw basics. Wrote dumb little scripts for calculating coffee costs and sorting grocery lists. Felt boring as heck, but man, it rebuilt my foundation like concrete.
Step 2: Building Ugly Little Things On Purpose
Maloney’s early work wasn’t polished, so I embraced the ugly. Made a mini text-based game where you “manage” a pretend team – zero graphics, all command-line trash. Looked like something from 1985, but forcing myself to FINISH it? That mattered. Deleted nothing, just saved every crappy version in a folder labeled “The Awkward Phase.”
Step 3: Talking To Humans (Not Just Screens)
Kept reading how Maloney collaborated constantly. So I pushed myself way out of comfort zone: messaged 3 strangers on LinkedIn doing cool AI stuff. Just asked, “Hey, can I buy you coffee and ask dumb questions?” Two ghosted me (oof), but one guy said yes. We met up, I scribbled notes like a maniac about his failures. Game-changer.
Step 4: Sharing Half-Baked Stuff Anyway
This one hurt. Maloney iterates publicly, so I took my janky text-game and posted a video of its bugs on Twitter. Typed “This sucks but here’s what I learned” – hands were shaking hitting tweet. Got roasted once (“lol 1990 called”), but two devs actually gave legit feedback. One even fixed my code! Felt like unlocking a cheat code.
Step 5: Repeating All The “Boring” Parts
Seriously underestimated how much Maloney grinds. So I blocked 6-7 AM every damn morning for 3 weeks – no emails, no scrolling – just building ONE tiny feature daily. After 14 days? Had a functioning (still ugly) app that could sort tasks AND send reminder texts. Small win, but it stacked up.
What Actually Clicked For Me
- Starting stupid small works. Those baby scripts? They’re muscle memory now.
- Sharing early = less fear later. That tweet was embarrassing, but now feedback doesn’t scare me.
- Convos > credentials. That coffee chat taught me 10x more than any blog post.
Still miles from Maloney-level, obviously. But following those steps – literally doing the simple, uncomfortable things first – finally made “building a career” feel less like a mystery and more like… stacking bricks. Ugly, uneven bricks sometimes, but mine.
