Cracking the Code: GitHub University

Why the Next Generation Needs to Build Something Real

If you have not listened to our recent conversation with Matt Dalio, you should.

And honestly, your kids should too.

I do not say that lightly. A lot of smart conversations sound interesting in the moment and disappear from your brain ten minutes later. This one stuck with me — not because Matt was taking shots at college or saying education does not matter.

What hit me was that he and Eric started talking about Arizona State University, and then the conversation moved into this bigger idea around talent, credentials, builders, and what matters when somebody is deciding who can help build a company.

Matt compared the Ivy League idea to what he called GitHub University.

Now, for people who do not live in the coding world, GitHub is not an actual university. There are no football games, dorm rooms, admissions office, alumni weekend, or ivy-covered buildings.

GitHub is where coders build and share. It is a place where people put their work out into the world — code, libraries, tools, ideas, experiments, fixes, improvements. Part workshop, part résumé, part reputation system, part proof.

Matt was not saying, “Do not go to school.”

He was saying, “Show me what you have built.”

A school name might get you in the door. A degree might start the conversation. A credential might tell someone you were capable of completing a path that was placed in front of you.

But a portfolio shows initiative, curiosity, problem-solving, and that you did not just read about the thing — you tried to do it.

The Question Is Changing

For a long time, the questions were pretty simple.

Where did you go to school? What was your GPA? What was your ACT score? What was your SAT score? What clubs were you in? What internships did you get?

I am not saying those things are worthless. They are not. Education matters. Discipline matters. Learning matters. Showing up matters.

But I think the question is changing.

What have you built?

When somebody can show you what they built, the conversation changes. They are not just telling you they are interested in engineering — they can show you the device they tried to design. They are not just telling you they like gaming — they can show you the game they are building. They are not just telling you they are creative — they can show you the website, book cover, design, animation, project, or portfolio.

This Is Not Anti-College

Let me be clear.

This is not an anti-college article. I am not telling kids not to go to school, or parents that college does not matter.

College offers experience, structure, challenge, and exposure to people who think differently. There is value in professors, classmates, deadlines, pressure, and learning how to operate outside your comfort zone.

But there is also value in building.

The best version is not school instead of building. It is school plus building. Learning plus applying. Classroom plus portfolio.

Because if you are going to ask someone to hire you, invest in you, admit you, partner with you, or trust you, it helps if you can show them something real.

Don’t Fake It

Years ago, I wrote a Strategy Addict piece called Don’t Fake It.

The idea was simple: do not pretend to be something you are not. Do not claim experience you do not have. Do not fake capability.

That article was written in a business context, but GitHub University made me think about the same idea in a different way. Kids are under so much pressure now to look impressive.

Build the perfect résumé. Join the perfect clubs. Start the perfect nonprofit. Tell the perfect story.

Sometimes all of that starts to feel fake.

Not always. There are young people doing real service work, building organizations, helping communities, solving problems, and leading in meaningful ways. But there are also plenty of things being packaged to look bigger than they are.

And adults can usually tell. Kids can tell too.

There is a difference between doing something for the résumé and building something out of genuine curiosity.

That is why GitHub University hit home for me. It is hard to fake the work. You either built something and worked through the problems, or you have nothing to show.

And if it failed, fine. Talk about that too. Because failure in a real project is still more interesting than perfection in a fake story.

Building Changes the Builder

I have seen this firsthand with young people. When they build something they care about, they talk differently. They explain differently. Their shoulders sit a little differently. Their confidence is not loud, but it is real.

It is not the confidence of, “I hope someone picks me.” It is the confidence of, “I worked on this. I struggled with this. I figured part of this out.”

That matters right now because this generation is carrying a lot. They are told to perform — in school, online, socially, athletically, academically, emotionally. Perform all the time.

That is exhausting.

And a lot of the systems they are performing inside of are systems where they do not have much control. They do not write the test. They do not choose the grading scale. They do not decide who gets admitted. They do not decide who gets picked.

But when they build something, they get some agency back. They can try again, change the design, rewrite the code, redraw the cover, rework the prototype, ask for feedback, launch version two.

That is closer to how life works: iteration, troubleshooting, overcoming, and adapting.

Overcome and Adapt

Something will go wrong. Good. That is where the learning is.

The first version may be bad. Even better. Now you have something to improve.

You may get stuck, which means you have to ask better questions. Somebody may not understand what you are trying to do, which means you have to learn how to communicate it.

Building teaches friction, humility, patience, and problem-solving. It teaches a young person that “I do not know yet” is not the same thing as “I cannot.”

Applied Learning

You can read about coding, or you can build something that breaks, fix it, and understand why it broke.

That gap matters. Applied learning sticks because you had to solve the problem when the clean theory did not match the messy reality.

That is part of what makes building so useful for young people. It gives them contact with the thing itself, not just the idea of it.

Build the Portfolio

The portfolio does not have to be fancy or perfect.

Show the project. Show an early version. Show what changed, what broke, what you learned, and what you would do differently.

That tells me more than a polished résumé ever could.

And the tools are already there. AI, open-source platforms, design tools, publishing tools, coding tools, video tools — there has never been more access to actually make something.

I also think employers are going to be less excited about training people from scratch when those tools are sitting right in front of us.

So if you have access to them, the question becomes pretty simple:

What are you doing with them?

What Are You Building?

We ask young people a lot of big questions.

What school do you want to go to? What do you want to major in? What job do you want someday?

Those are fair questions, but they can make a sixteen-year-old feel like they are supposed to have their whole life figured out.

Most adults do not even have their whole life figured out.

So ask something they can act on now:

What are you building?

Building gives them somewhere to begin. It does not have to be the thing they do forever. It can simply be something they care enough about to try.

The Code

Learn. Apply. Build. Share. Improve. Repeat.

Learn enough to start. Apply what you know. Build something real. Share it with someone who can give you useful feedback. Improve it. Then repeat the process.

It builds the builder.

Working through something of their own can build confidence, resilience, initiative, and self-respect.

That is why Matt Dalio’s “GitHub University” idea stayed with me. The next generation does not need more pressure to look perfect. They need more encouragement to build something real.

One of the most powerful things a young person can say is not just, “I studied this.”

It is:

“I built this.”