Thirty years ago, I was a different kind of developer. I measured myself by speed. How quickly could I get from idea to prototype? How many features could I deliver in a week? How fast could I patch that bug before anyone noticed?
And I was fast, very fast. My younger self thrived on that velocity. Shipping quickly felt like winning. But in truth, much of what I built back then carried hidden costs. I didn’t always think about maintainability. Code security didn’t exist (really, it wasn’t a thing that time). Quality lived in the shadow of speed.
The Shift That Comes with Time
With years of coding, leading projects, and watching systems evolve, something changed. I became slower. Not because I lost skill, but because I began to see beyond the surface. I could anticipate where code would break months later. I could spot the subtle risks hiding in “just a quick fix.”
Every line of code I wrote carried more weight. I took more time, asked more questions, and built with an eye toward the long run. It felt slower—but the outcomes were stronger. Cleaner. Safer. More resilient.
In many ways, that slowdown was growth.
The AI Partnership
Then came AI. At first, I saw it as just another tool, helpful, but limited. Over time, it became something more: a partner.
Where I once slowed down on repetitive tasks, AI filled in the gaps. It didn’t replace my judgment, it amplified it.
The balance shifted again. My experience guided the “why” and the “what,” while AI accelerated the “how”. Suddenly, I was building at a pace I hadn’t felt since my early years, but this time with the quality and security of decades behind me.
Faster again… but different
Today, I am both slower and faster. Slower in thought, because I weigh consequences more carefully. Faster in execution, because AI helps turn those thoughts into reality almost instantly.
It’s not the same speed I had in my twenties. Back then, speed was raw energy. Now, speed is precision paired with acceleration. I’m not just coding quickly, I’m coding wisely, and AI is the bridge that lets me do both.
Looking Back, Looking Forward
If you had told the younger me that slowing down would one day make me faster, I wouldn’t have believed it. But here I am. Experience taught me to build better. AI gave me the means to build faster.
And together, they’ve brought me to a place I never expected: a version of myself that codes with the excitement of the past, the wisdom of the present, and the tools of the future.
