Day 70 of #ZeroToBuilder 💥
You shipped your first open-source PR.

Now Google drops Gemini CLI—AI in your terminal:
🔹 gemini explain app.py
🔹 gemini write test for routes.py

Your laptop? Not just a tool. It’s a teammate.’

open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

🧠Day 67 – Practicing Pair Programming with AI Have you tried talking to your AI… I mean really talking to your AI using voice?

Day 67 of #ZeroToBuilder
Pair programming with AI = thinking like a builder, not just a coder.

🧠 Narrate your logic
🛠️ Let AI reflect back
🎙️ Try voice mode — it’s like having a junior dev who never gets tired.

We’re building real software now. 67% done.

zerotobuilder.substack.com/p/day-67-pra...

✅ Phase 6: AI-Assisted Software Engineering Best Practices (Part 2) As your projects become more real-world, security isn’t optional—and AI can help spot vulnerabilities before they become costly.

Day 55 of #ZeroToBuilder 🛡️
Learned how to keep secrets safe & block bad input. Even beginner apps need security.

💡 Prompt:
“Review this code for hardcoded secrets & unsafe input.”

Start building like it’s going to production.

Substack open.substack.com/pub/ctoadvis...

#AI #Python

Day 54: Performance Optimization & Evaluating Your Tech Choices Now that we've created some applications, let's move to on to performance optimization using AI.

Day 54 of #ZeroToBuilder
"Do you even performance optimize?" 👀

🔍 Is Python still right?
💾 Is MySQL holding you back?
🤖 Let AI guide you toward better, faster decisions.

We’re not just coding—we’re building smarter.
Read + vibe code prompt:
🖼️ Thumbnail goes hard 😂
open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

🛠️ Day 49: Completing Your Mini Machine Learning Project Let's put it all together!

The past few days of #ZeroToBuilder have been foundational—we've been learning how ML models are trained. Simple ideas, stacked together.

Day 49, we put it all together in a mini-project. AI training doesn’t have to be intimidating when you learn it step by step. open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

🧱 Day 37–38: Deploy Your App + Bonus Cloud Upgrade (Firestore on Google Cloud) Dell Tech World took over my schedule, so we’re doubling up today—and it’s a good one.

🧱 Day 37–38 of #ZeroToBuilder

Built a CRUD app? Now it’s time to ship it—and go cloud-native.
Today we:
✅ Deploy your Flask app
✅ Explore Google Cloud Firestore (NoSQL, serverless, free tier)
✅ Drop in a real GitHub starter repo
🔗 Learn, fork, and launch: open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

🧠 Day 35: Office Hours — Recap & Web MVPs with AI Still at Dell Tech World so it's nice to get a day or recap vs. net new learning.

If you have been following up to day 35 of #ZerotoBuilder, you are well ahead of how your peers are using AI. Today, we recap what we've learned thus far about on building Flask-based apps. open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

🎯 Day 34 Goal: Add HTML & Basic CSS to Your Flask App I'm double fisting it today. I'm watching Michael Dell's Day One Keynote on AI and getting today's lesson done.

I'm double-fisting today’s tech energy. One hand on Michael Dell's AI keynote at #DellTechWorld, the other pushing out Day 34 of Zero to Builder. I'm giving the AI Factory a new definition. #ZerotoBuilder

Let’s talk front-end meets back-end in Flask. 👇
open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

🧪 Day 32: Dynamic Routes — Your Code Just Got Personal Today we unlocked a key building block of real-world web development: dynamic routes. With just a few lines of Python and a little AI help, your web app can start responding to user input in meaningfu...

Day 32 of #ZeroToBuilder — my code now responds with “Hi, Keith!” 😄

Built a Flask app with dynamic routes + form input. AI helped me scaffold the whole thing fast.

Today’s win: turning user input into interactive behavior.
Lesson link: open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

🧱 Day 31: Your First Flask App + Revisiting Old Code with AI From First Server to Second Chances: Learning Flask and Revisiting Old Code with AI

🧱 Day 31 of #ZeroToBuilder
Today I built my first Flask server on purpose.

Funny enough—my first AI-generated app used Flask too. I revisited that repo (CTO Scanner) with Codex and it was like watching past-me get a code review from future-me.

zerotobuilder.substack.com/p/day-31-you...

🧰 Day 30 – Build Your First Real App with AI: CLI Mini-Project Let's build our first app and more importantly, let's start Vibe Coding!

Day 30 of #ZeroToBuilder
Built my first real CLI app using Python + AI.

✅ Classes
✅ Generators
✅ Tests
✅ AI-built docstrings & CLI help

New today: “Vibe Code” prompt to build side-by-side with ChatGPT.

What are you building? Show me. 👇

open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

/4
If you're following something like the #ZerotoBuilder path, this is a huge multiplier.
Projects build on past lessons—your AI needs that history to help you grow faster.

Day 29 of #ZeroToBuilder 🧠
We built a CLI task tracker—but more importantly, we hit pause to remember what we’ve learned.
Decorators, classes, testing... it’s a lot.
AI helped me recall the path.

Catch the recap + project here: zerotobuilder.substack.com/p/day-29-bui...

✅ Day 28: Testing & TDD – Make It Work, Then Make It Right Early on in the series I talked about the importance of testing your AI code. Today we start the testing journey.

Day 28 of #ZeroToBuilder: I let AI write my tests... but I still had to decide what to test.
We explored TDD, unittest, and prompting for edge cases.
AI speeds things up, but thoughtful testing is still on me.
Next: a CLI app with docs and tests.

open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

I have roughly 100 subscribers to my #ZerotoBuilder substack. Approximately 47% of the readers open their daily lessons. That's 47 people advancing their careers via my content. As my friend would say, that's dope!

🧠 Day 26: Demystifying Python Decorators with AI A late Mother's Day Lesson.

#ZerotoBuilder. Decorators. It took me a minute to wrap my head around when to use it. An example is scaling the use of a function beyond a team. IE, if security wanted to add logging to a credit card processing call without changing the function itself. open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

Real talk Saturday. Folks ask how I balance work, life, learning, and creating content like I’m some kind of machine. Truth is—I’m not. Today, I’m pulling weeds. Literally. While #ZerotoBuilder takes a rest, I’m tending to what matters offline too. That’s the rhythm.

Zero to Builder – Day 16: Problem-Solving Practice (Part 1) Today, you start the climb from coder ➔ builder. 🛠️ Every real project begins with problem-solving. Build the muscle now — your future self will thank you.

Today’s #ZeroToBuilder feels like a real shift. We’re moving from just using AI to generate code to actually building applications. Fundamentals matter more than ever. Time to push myself as I work through tonight’s exercises. zerotobuilder.substack.com/p/zero-to-bu...

📅 Zero to Builder – Day 15: Weekly Recap + Office Hours Reflection 🔄 Weekly Recap: What We Covered (Days 11–14)

Day 15 of 100 Days of AI - #ZerotoBuilder

Let's take a break in the action and focus on what we've learned over the past week. open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

Day 12 of Zero to Builder - Office Hours | LinkedIn This is our weekly ask me anything for office hours. I'm going to try to start getting a head on scheduling the Linked In event

Fun with #zerotobuilder office hour. I used Cursor AI to create a basic prompt app that calls OpenAI's API in about 45 minutes. Something that would have easily taken me all day, if not longer, at my current development skill level. www.linkedin.com/events/73215...

Day 12 of Zero to Builder - Office Hours | LinkedIn This is our weekly ask me anything for office hours. I'm going to try to start getting a head on scheduling the Linked In event

Today's Office hours for #ZerotoBuilder 12:00 CDT www.linkedin.com/events/73215...

Day 11: Exploring Tuples and Sets Python is the language of data scientists so more data set types.

I knocked out Day 11 of #ZerotoBuilder on the flight back from AI Infrastructure Day 2. Python is the language for data science and has a rich set of data types. Today we introduce Tuples and Sets. zerotobuilder.substack.com/p/day-11-exp...

✅ Day 10: Wrap-Up and Reflection It’s time to reflect and retain what we’ve learned.

We’re on day 10 of 100 days of AI. Our #zerotobuilder has these check points designed in. What have we learned and how do we reinforce that learning? open.substack.com/pub/zerotobu...

I'm here in the Valley, and I ran into a Nvidia executive who thanked me for producing my #zerotobuilder 100-day learning journey. Keep building out loud. You never know who is watching.

Day 7 – Debugging with AI: Fix Code and Your Thinking | #ZerotoBuilder
youtu.be/tkcKje_vb5A

🔁 Day 6: “What Even Is a Function?” — Learning to Greet with Code Today we’re tackling one of the most important building blocks of real-world programming: functions.

Day 6 of #ZeroToBuilder: Learning functions—and how to ask AI for help when you’re stuck. Wrote a greeting function, hit Args: in a docstring, paused, asked ChatGPT. Clarity unlocked. Keep building. Keep asking. #zerotobuilder 👇

Have you been keeping up with #ZerotoBuilder? We are on Control Flow in Python and it's all about eating your curds and wey!

Video: youtu.be/x41O-clwMdA

Lesson: zerotobuilder.substack.com/p/day-4-cont...

If you’re still on Day 1 of #ZerotoBuilder, that’s not failure—it’s evidence you’re doing it right.
Learning isn’t a race.
If you’re pausing to ask AI questions, that’s not a delay.
That’s mastery forming.
The course expects you to struggle a little. Keep going.

Diving into Git & GitHub tonight — setup was smooth thanks to CursorAI. But the real challenge? Wrapping your head around Git's terminology and workflow. That’s where the learning curve hits.

Up next in #100DaysofAI: Variables & Strings. Familiar ground, but always room to go deeper. #ZerotoBuilder

🛠️ Pro Tip:
Start with:
“Assume I have a file called hello_world.py that prints 'Hello, World'. I want to...”

This is especially important when using tools like Cursor or ChatGPT, where each chat = fresh slate.

#100DaysOfAI #ZeroToBuilder #PromptEngineering

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