A lot of people, especially these days, get into programming while they're young. And so did I. But not for the reasons or the route you might be thinking. I got started by trying to build an entire operating system for my phone. Well, sort of. Let me explain.
A phone that started it all
Back in high school, I owned a Xiaomi Redmi Note 3—a very popular device at the time—known for its excellent developer support. The device had great specs and offered incredible value for money. By this point, I was already familiar with rooting phones and had flashed a few custom ROMs on older hand-me-down devices.
But now, with my own phone in hand and having explored everything MIUI (Xiaomi’s Android skin) had to offer, I wanted more. I was eager to root my phone and install a custom ROM—specifically, the Resurrection Remix ROM, a stock Android-based ROM known for being super customizable.
Okay, wtf is a bootloader now?
Fast forward six months, and I had gone from not even knowing what a bootloader was to flashing a new ROM almost every other day. I was deep into the world of custom ROMs. I spent countless hours on XDA forums and Telegram communities dedicated to my phone. One day, I saw a friend from these communities—roughly the same age as me—release his own build of a popular custom ROM. That’s when it clicked for me: I had to learn how to do this myself.
At this point, I had virtually no programming experience. I didn’t know what Git was, let alone what it took to build a custom ROM. I didn’t even know it was possible for an individual to build their own operating system. So, I started reaching out to popular ROM builders, asking them how it was done. After lots of back-and-forth messages and plenty of confusion, I finally had a plan to begin with.
Guess I have a roadmap now?
The plan was simple—or so I thought:
- Get a virtual machine.
- Clone the device trees, kernel, and ROM itself.
- Modify parts of the code.
- Finally, compile the ROM.
It sounded easy enough, but for someone who had never even SSHed into a server or created a VM before, it was confusing as hell. But I wasn’t about to give up at step one. So, I provisioned a VM through GCP, taking advantage of their $100 free credit offer at the time.
The first merge conflict and build failure
With the VM set up, I started copy-pasting commands I had gathered from various online discussions. At first, things went surprisingly smoothly. Then, I hit my first major roadblock: a merge conflict. I was completely frustrated. I had no idea what was going on. I was editing C++ and Java code in the nano text editor, and I knew nothing about any of these three.
Did I mention I was doing all of this on mobile? Yes, I was SSH'd into my VM from my Android phone, copy-pasting commands onto a 5.5" display. To put it nicely, it was a struggle. But somehow, I managed to push through the merge conflicts and reached the final stages, where I only needed to make some adjustments to the Makefile (I think). It was go time.
So, I ran the build script, not knowing that it was a build script, by the way, and it just wouldn't compile. The build would either fail immediately, or it would run for a solid 2 to 3 hours while I kept my eyes peeled on the progress, rejoicing that it hadn't failed yet... and then it would fail. It was miserable. All that effort for nothing.
So, I went and tried a different ROM—Lineage OS. That failed too. Okay, next ROM—Cosmic OS. No surprises, that didn't work out very well either. I guess I wasn't learning from my mistakes.
I guess miracles do happen?
Counterintuitively, I went ahead and tried building a slightly less popular ROM, Validus OS. And by some miracle, I was finally able to compile and build my own custom ROM.
It was glorious. It wasn't an easy process. As you can see from the initial screenshot and this one, it took me 2 months to get there.
To be honest, did I learn programming directly from this experience? Not really. But this was undeniably one of the most impactful moments that led me to pursue a career in computer science. It sparked my curiosity, and that curiosity evolved into a deep interest in coding.
I feel like I was "vibe coding" before vibe coding was even a thing!
The takeaway
You don’t need to be a genius to get into programming or development. All it takes is an innate passion for building and a willingness to face challenges head-on. I started with zero knowledge, and looking back, I think I’m doing pretty well now. If I can do it, you definitely can too. Whether you’re looking to build a custom ROM, a website, or something entirely different—take that first step. You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve.