I'm Pav. I didn't come to code through a computer science degree — I came to it as a teenager who needed the money, and I've been joining the dots ever since. Here's the honest version.
In my teens I built websites for local businesses. Not for the love of the craft — for the money. I didn't come from a privileged background, and building sites was a way to earn that didn't need capital, connections, or anyone's permission. It turned out to be the best coding education I never knew I was getting.
After my law degree I joined a global law firm, where I got the chance to join the dots between the coding I'd taught myself and the legal world: automating documents as a legal engineer. My job was automating the quick wins lawyers do — and I soon noticed I enjoyed that more than the law itself.
I'd have loved being a lawyer. But being in a position where I didn't have to chase billable hours — working in a world that was actively reducing the need for them — was more appealing. That was the moment the plan changed.
The platform we used was proprietary: no user guide, no documentation, no Stack Overflow answers waiting. Just the generic resources for the programming languages underneath it. So I learned the only way available — by doing, and then by teaching my own team so we could scale.
Teaching turned out to be the trick. Every time I coached someone through the platform, I understood it better myself. That lesson stuck.
In the 2020 lockdown I put a message out to my network: I'd teach small coding classes for free, 40 minutes a week — 40 because that's where the free Zoom plan cut off. The response was bigger than I expected. People asked to bring a friend, and their friends brought friends.
That weekend I ran three classes spanning Singapore, India and the UK, for twenty students. Every one of them ended up writing and running real Python. Seneca said "when we teach, we learn" — psychologists call it the Protégé Effect — and those students proved it on me: their questions taught me as much as my lessons taught them. Code with Pav grew out of those classes.
Read the original write-up →These days I lead global technology, AI platforms and engineering in highly regulated markets — the kind of environment where software has to be right, data is sensitive, and "it seems to work" doesn't cut it. Everything I teach carries that discipline: foundations first, AI used with understanding, real things shipped properly.
Here's something I've learned working alongside them: experts don't know everything — they're just good at presenting themselves as if they do. And that's not necessarily bad; they're buying time to figure it out. The figuring-out part is a skill, and it's the one I actually teach.
So if you're smart, motivated, from a "non-technical" background and quietly convinced coding is for other people — that was me. If a law grad who built websites for local businesses can end up leading AI platforms, you can build your first real thing. I'll be in your corner while you do.