I’ve been writing software for upwards of fifteen years. I remember learning really old things like QBASIC from a library book, to the start of people using Model-View-Controller, and the invention of jQuery.. AngularJS.. React..

Needless to say, it’s been a long time down this journey, and it’s been really cool to watch it all evolve— as well as glean some things from each language/framework to bring along with me in my toolkit.

But the latest change, artificial intelligence, has been so different. Granted that under the covers, it’s kind of like a “probability engine” where the more likely outcome is actually what comes out of the mix, it’s been very strange for someone like me to use. Someone who is so used to writing every line of code myself and making decisions about them.. Caring about them.

Heck, even as I’m writing this, I’m using double-spaces after my periods and that’s considered “what old people do.”

But one area I’ve always struggled with in software development/engineering/architecture, is that I’m constantly surrounded by people with extremely strong opinions and often a lack of social ability to just have a conversation without hurting feelings. I like React, other people like Vue/Svelte/SOMETHING, but that doesn’t mean that we need to make each other feel bad for using the other thing. And let’s be honest, I also struggle with ego at times, because I’m afraid to make myself vulnerable after having had enough negative experiences, that I protect myself.

This is where I’ve found that AI has been a very helpful tool for me.

I am not afraid to ask an LLM a “dumb” question. What’s a dumb question? It’s a question that you could have easily researched yourself or found the answer or after enough attempts, you should already know or be able to infer the answer.

But I’m old now. I forget things. I’ve worked on so many projects/languages/frameworks/etc. that I may not remember the exact terminology or keyword or heck, maybe it’s a new technology I’ve never seen before— but I want to bring along my past experiences without needing to go read the manual for every little thing.

Asking for help without feeling stupid, asking for opinions without feeling insulted, and asking for someone to write some code that you just would rather not write. AI is neat. It has its uses. You still need to think, but it’s also okay to choose not to think too hard about everything.