I never knew the life of pre-AI stack-overflow developers (And Why I'm Mad About It)
I hear tales of the old days when geeks spent their billable hours rambling through those classic HTML aesthetic dev-forums, stack-overflow and what-not to get their idea into a working code. But unfortunately I started a bit too late.
The Before Times (A.K.A. The Tale of the Geek)
Let me paint you a picture of a developer's life pre say 2022 (maybe?). A tech nerd sitting in his corner, booting up his PC opening up his Firefox (coz we love FOSS don't we?). There sits his 20 tabs lying around displaying countless discussions, articles and what-not. All for that one bug that he wants to resolve.
But these ramblings have a catch that we are missing, i.e great coding skills. That geek has now learnt ig 4 5 different workflows, he did maybe 2-3 experiments and now he knows what not to do while debugging. You know that old guy that has been in the industry for 10+ years and still uses the same workflow as he did 10 years ago? (The f-ing workflow is flawless and works mind you) Yeah, that's the kind of guy we are talking about.
So now, the geek is not just ranting about the bug, he is also providing a solution to it. He is not just a ranting bug reporter, he is a bug solver. He is a HERO.
2020, Lockdown, HP Laptop, Charles Severance and Me
It was 2020 when I got into programming. It started as a hobby back then but now it has become my bread n butter (sort of). I had a modest (2020 standard) HP laptop with a great internet and decided to start with python (because reddit told me so). Took up Charles Severance's Coursera course (Python for Everybody) and then started with CS50 (I knew nothing about programming back then). Had a bit of fun with those Chuck lectures (mostly the slytherin jokes) and built a few basic things on Atom (but who cares right?).
This was the time when I experienced (somewhat) the joy of rambling through those classic HTML aesthetic dev-forums, stack-overflow and what-not to get my idea into a working code. No coding assistants, no prompt engineering and no context engineering bullshit, just me and my minimal code.
ChatGPT and I
Came 2022, I had just started my undergrad and my first sem had a project requirement for a coursework. I tried building a simple calculus based portfolio optimizer. No AI codes just pure python coding done by a newbie.
January 2023, A random physics workshop, assigned to take some readings and make inferences based on those readings. There sat my friend (check him out, he does some crazy RL stuff) typing away on his laptop on a minimal green-black screen and the rest was history. It was ChatGPT and it was crazy. He typed his query and passed those readings and voila, the output streaming like a voice inside the laptop guiding him. Curious me, latched unto him and made him show me the ropes. It was a whole new world.
The project
Remember the project? the calculus based portfolio optimizer? Yes, ChatGPT took over the reigns. What started as a experiment to write code through ChatGPT, turned into a full fledged project with 75% ai-written code and 25% painful debugging. But nonetheless it worked.
The Problem
But here's the thing - I never got to experience the joy of spending hours debugging, the satisfaction of finding that one Stack Overflow answer that saves your day, or the frustration of trying to understand someone else's code. I never got to build that muscle memory of problem-solving that comes from struggling through issues.
Don't get me wrong - AI is amazing and has made development so much more accessible. But there's something to be said about the old way of doing things. The way that built real understanding, not just copy-paste solutions.
The Future
I'm not saying we should go back to the old ways. But maybe we need to find a balance. Use AI as a tool, not a crutch. Learn the fundamentals, understand the concepts, and then let AI help you implement them faster.
Because at the end of the day, the best developers aren't the ones who can copy-paste the most code. They're the ones who understand what they're building and why it works.