Got into AI early and now use ChatGPT and Claude constantly. With their help I've built a handful of web apps, some Python scripts and desktop tools, and an Android app on Supabase with real multiple users.
So I can build things. But I'm very aware there are big holes underneath it. I can usually get something working without really knowing why it works, whether it's actually well built, or what's going to break down the road once it gets more complex.
Feels like it's time to go back to fundamentals. Michael Jordan still worked on his footwork, that kind of thing.
What I'm hoping to get to eventually:
* build small useful apps, windows/mac/android/ios/web
* automate chunks of my own and my team's work
* maybe build a simple SaaS at some point
* generally not get left behind, open to this reshaping my career or spinning into a side thing
Was hoping for something structured, starting from prompt/context engineering and working into real programming fundamentals, APIs, databases, architecture, security, testing, deployment. Problem is anything I find is stale within months given how fast this moves.
Not looking for free necessarily, and definitely not looking for "learn to code in a weekend." Willing to put in real time.
For people who've gone down this road already: what's actually worth learning properly, what's fine to just learn enough to supervise, and what can honestly just stay AI's job?
P.S.: Yes I polished/refined this post using AI, but I first wrote it all myself (the original was twice as long).
theroadnotbacon•29m ago
AI can help tremendously but there’s so much you as a human understand about product direction and real-world use that the AI simply can’t. Everywhere you look, companies are popping up that are desperate to ingest data from every possible source in order to fix this context and intuition gap. But it’s just not possible. As long as you’re the one who ultimately decides what features you’ll implement, the model will be bad at guessing what to build for in the future. And anyway, you can spend all your energy learning how to squeeze the last 10% of work out of your model and harness and workflow but at the end of the day that’s time you’re not learning about designing resilient systems and actually doing the hard work of implementing them.
Bias: I’m a software engineer, and not super ai-pilled, so. There’s that.