I started my first real coding project way back in 2002.

Really, I had a few sample projects when I was first learning to code. Those projects helped prepare me to think about the bigger picture, but there is nothing like sinking your teeth into a live business project that has real impact to a business.

And while my coding business turned into a 6-figure a year business, I made a ton of newbie mistakes along the way that held it back in the early years.

In fact, there are 3 critical mistakes I made that I don't want YOU to make with your first (or 5th) coding project. If you can avoid these, you can not only grow better as a coder but grow faster.

One of the first projects I worked on was with a Basketball Magazine company. I was tasked with architecting and developing both the front-end and back-end of an online magazine entirely in ColdFusion and MSSQL (along with HTML, CSS and JavaScript). This provided a complete online magazine with online transactions for purchasing...