Life Before AI
Lessons in Development, Hard Work, and Critical Thinking
Life before AI, being a developer, was a different world — a harder world in the sense that everything you do requires tremendous focus and incredible persistence. Everything we did back then required deep focus and incredible persistence. Challenges were real, and so were the triumphs that followed. Honest to God, I sometimes miss parts of that time.
I was reminded of those early days vividly. There were no AI-powered tools back in those days that could swoop in and solve your problems for you. Every problem was a mountain which you had to climb alone. If you had bugs in your code, no AI could have run a simulation or suggested a fix. You had to work out by yourself. Countless late nights staring at my screen, combing through lines of code trying to figure out where I did it wrong. Debugging was like detective work. Sometimes, finally, it would come out what I was hunting for, and the relief was almost overwhelming — like just unlocking this huge mystery that had been gnawing at me for hours maybe even days.
You’d learn so much in those moments. Not only about the code you’re writing but about the system…
