I'm Really Starting To Like Coding With AI

Hey, what's going on guys? So, every so often I go through these phases of burnout. I think we all do. I'm sure you guys can relate to this. And I was really lucky because for years I didn't have any burnout. And I had a very just high level of passion for software development. I'd say from like 2015 to 2020. And I was doing freelance work and at the same time uh building and and growing my YouTube channel. And my productivity just went through the roof. And then in 2020, I had a huge burnout phase and and since then it's been kind of up and down. However, since I started really getting into these more hardcore AI tools like Cursor, Claude Code, uh I feel like I've had that flame reignited to to just build stuff. And that's what I want to talk about in this video. [Music] All right, guys. So, I just wanted to take a second and tell you about today's sponsor. 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I'm in a new office. We'll see how it works out. I'm still kind of tweaking things, so hopefully the quality is okay. But I was I'd say I was a little late to the party with some of these hardcore AI tools. Um, I mean, I've been using ChatGpt and Copilot since they were released, but tools like Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, they really bring it to a whole new level. And it's not just autocomplete. It's not just copying and pasting blocks of code here and there or just asking questions. It's literally having the agent write all your code for you while you just dictate what you want to build. Now, I know that there's a lot of opinions out there. I know that some of you ab absolutely hate this and I I can see that point of view. Uh I really can clear as day. I was skeptical and I still am honestly. I I do think that there's certain situations, certain people that are at a certain skill level where this is an absolute horrible idea. But I also think for others it basically gives you coding superpowers and you can be more productive than you ever were before. and the the way that we code just as a whole, it's it's changing 100%. It's it's going to be completely different. There's no fighting it. I think that the only the only thing that's going to come from people being hesitant and and not using this stuff is that they're going to fall behind, you know, and I I feel like I've fallen behind just because I wasn't on this stuff right when it came out. Um, which I think was a kind of a mistake on my part being a content creator in the space. I should be on top of new things that are coming out. Um, and I'll talk more about why I was hesitant in a few minutes, but first I want to explain and talk about why I feel like I've had that passion and motivation come back after somewhat of a burnout phase. So, I I personally have always loved building things. I mean, I think that that's a given. All developers feel that way, I'm sure. um you know create the feeling of creating something that you can put out there for other people to use or even for just yourself to use it's like a high and using tools like cursor allow you to come up with an MVP a minimum viable product and have it built and deployed within just a couple hours you know obviously depending on the size of the project um but speed is definitely uh an advantage I'd say the main advantage another advantage is that you don't have to spend all this time doing tedious tasks and setting up configurations, writing boilerplate, debugging environment issues, things like that. You can build a and and manage at a much higher level. Now, this has had me actually getting up earlier excited to work on side projects, and I haven't felt that way in in a few years now. Um, I did something s very simple at first. I just created a favicon generator. For years, I've been using a tool to generate my icons, and I figured why not just build build it on my own. And this isn't something that I would have wanted to spend days building on my own. It's just not that important enough. Um, but I figured, you know, I want to try out cursor. Let's put something simple together. And I built and deployed favicon forge.io in like 40 minutes. Um, since then I've created a bunch of other projects and some more advanced tools that I actually plan on turning into a SAS and hopefully making them profitable someday. Um, I also have a list of projects that I've personally wanted to use over the years that either don't exist or they're not very good. For instance, I've talked with you guys before about the fact that I suffer from migraines and vertigo and tonitis. And uh I actually solved an issue with chat GPT, an issue that I've had for like 5 years that doctors couldn't figure out. So I'm creating an app based on that where you can log your your symptoms and use AI to basically help you find a possible diagnosis and find different ideas. Um the issue I had was like an ear blockage. uh felt like my ears were blocked every day and AI helped me figure out figure it out that it was actually dry skin within my ear canal and we found a product on Amazon, an oil moisturizer that fixed it and doctors had no clue what this was for for like 5 years I I've had it um and that's completely cured because of AI. So I figured why not build a UI around that um to help people solve their their health health issues. Now, this is something that would take me forever to build from scratch, and I still have a long way to go, but it's possible to build in just a few weeks, spending maybe an hour or two, a few days per week. Uh, another thing that I've wanted to do for years is is have a custom platform uh for the video player for Traversy Media rather than using the the pre-built solution that we use now. and I just haven't had the time to to put into it doing courses and tutorials and other stuff. But we can build that now, you know, 10 20 times faster. Um, now I do want to address the the elephant in the room here, especially when it comes to beginners. There are some real concerns and potential consequences that um that need to be addressed. So, first off, if you're just starting out as as a developer, I think relying too heavily on these AI tools can actually hurt you in the long run. You know, when I was learning to code back in the day, um I had to understand every line, you know, every function, every concept because I was writing it all myself. We didn't obviously didn't have AI back then, um or we didn't have the hardware to run it. Now that struggle, as painful as it was, it built a deep understanding of how things actually work. And I think now, you know, if you're a beginner and you're just telling the AI agent to to build your entire app without understanding what it's actually doing, you're not really learning to code. You know, you're learning to be a project manager for an AI. And that's a problem because when things break, and they will break, you won't have that foundational knowledge to debug them or or understand why they're not working. You know, there's also a concern about the just the industry as a whole. If everyone is using these AI tools to generate their code, what happens to entry level positions? you know, companies might start expecting senior level output from junior developers or they might just hire fewer developers overall because you know, the productivity gains are so significant. Um, and let's be real about this to these tools are not perfect. They can generate code that looks right and they're always the AIS are always very confident in their answers even if they're completely wrong and there can be bugs, security vulnerabilities. Uh I think security is probably the biggest issue, performance issues, um things that you might not catch if you if you don't have that experience to spot them. You know, I've seen AI generated code that works fine in development, but it completely falls apart under real world conditions. And I actually made a tweet this morning that that I it sums up how I feel exactly. So I said, if you're an experienced developer, use AI to build. you know, if you're a beginner or new to a technology, use AI to learn. You know, there's there's a lot more than one way to use AI. And the level that you use it at can be anywhere between using it to create your entire project and having you not write even one line of code to you writing all your code, but just asking for suggestions and asking how things work. And if you're a beginner, it's it's amazing for learning. um you just have to actually use it to learn and not just do everything for you. So, you have to really have some some discipline if you're going to be using AI as a beginner. But that's it, guys. Hopefully, you got a little insight from this video. Of course, this is all just my own opinion and experience, so take it with a grain of salt.