The First Time My Code Worked

I still remember the first time I wrote code that actually worked.

But before that, I was just trying to understand English.

When I moved to the U.S. from Bangladesh in 2011, I didn’t speak English fluently. I was eight years old, trying to navigate a new country, a new school system, and a new language, all at once. My way in? YouTube.

I started watching videos to learn how people talked, basic grammar lessons, cartoons, game walkthroughs. One day, I clicked on a language video, and when it ended, the algorithm queued up the next one:
“Intro to Java Programming”

I didn’t fully understand the title. But I clicked play anyway. And I watched it.

That video, probably made for college students, was where it all started. I didn’t know what Java was, or what “object-oriented” meant, or why someone would need a compiler. But something about it pulled me in. The mix of logic, structure, and creativity felt familiar, even when the words didn’t.

So I followed along. Paused constantly. Googled every error message. Had no idea what a class or method was, but I tried to recreate what I saw. Then one day, I typed this:

System.out.println("Hello, world!");

And it worked.

The terminal echoed back exactly what I told it to. That was it, just a message on a screen. But to me, it felt like the first time the machine talked back.

Language, Loops, and Control

In a way, I was learning two languages at the same time: English and code.
I didn’t fully understand either, but I learned both through repetition, trial, and a willingness to look dumb until I didn’t. Coding, in particular, gave me something powerful: instant feedback.

I’d type something. Run it. Break it. Fix it. Try again. I didn’t need permission or perfection, just curiosity. And every time something ran the way I intended, I felt a kind of control I didn’t feel anywhere else yet.

Over time, I went deeper, from print() statements to calculators, loops, games. I started watching college lectures from Harvard, even if I only understood fragments. I filled in the gaps with forums, tutorials, and constant experimentation. What I lacked in formal instruction, I made up for in iteration.

That process, typing, testing, thinking, retrying, became a habit. A way of learning. A way of thinking.

From Feedback to Behavior

Eventually, I stopped asking “did it work?” and started asking “why does it work?”
What happens when it doesn’t? Can this adapt to someone else’s use case? What breaks in a different environment?

Years later, those same questions would shape how I built Kodezi.

Kodezi wasn’t built to autocomplete code or generate fancy snippets. It was built to understand what’s going on beneath the surface, to listen to your codebase, track its behavior over time, and fix issues before you even ask. It’s not just automation. It’s autonomous memory and evolution. It learns the way I used to: through watching, failing, adapting, and doing it again.

Same Loop. Bigger System.

The first time my code worked, it printed a message.
Now, I build systems that help millions of lines of code stay alive, by listening to them the way I once learned to listen to a machine.

And funny enough, the same platform that helped me learn English…
also gave me the reason to build a language of my own.