Last week I did something I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I did — I resurrected a side project I hadn't touched in a decade.
Meet Drivelert: an anti-drowsiness app I built ages ago to help drivers stay alert on long trips. The Play Store had quietly pulled it down due to ancient target SDK, zero maintenance, the usual graveyard story. I'd moved on. The app hadn't.
Then, for reasons I can't fully explain (nostalgia? a slow weekend? some stubborn refusal to let past-me's work die?), I decided to bring it back.
What Even Was This Thing?
Drivelert was a simple but genuinely useful idea: monitor signs of driver fatigue and alert them before it becomes dangerous. I built it back when I was younger, more idealistic, and apparently not bothered by shipping something and completely abandoning it.
The code was... a time capsule. Deprecated APIs, patterns I wouldn't touch today, some choices that made me genuinely wince. But the idea was solid. The bones were good.
A decade later: smarter, more experienced, and AI finally made the revival real
This time around, I wasn't flying solo. I brought AI into the workflow for unpicking outdated patterns, modernizing chunks of logic, and accelerating the parts that would've taken me days to slog through manually.
It's a weird experience, honestly. You're reading code written by a younger version of yourself, and then having an AI help you translate it into something modern. Felt a bit like co-writing a letter to the past.
What made it work was the mix of experience and capability.
I had the wisdom and context of why things were built a certain way. AI brought the momentum and precision to rebuild them better.
That blend of hindsight, experience, and AI support turned out to be surprisingly powerful.
It's Live Again
After a week of evenings, Drivelert is back up on the Play Store:
There's something quietly satisfying about seeing an old project breathe again not just preserved, but actually improved. Younger-me would probably be pleased. Slightly jealous of the tools available now, but pleased.
What I Actually Learned
- Old side projects aren't necessarily dead, sometimes they just need the right moment and a better toolkit.
- AI assistance genuinely changes the calculus on revival projects. The "is this worth the effort?" math shifts when you can move faster.
- Shipping something imperfect 10 years ago > never shipping the perfect version. Past-me understood this intuitively. I'd forgotten.
It's a second innings for a scrappy little app. Let's see how it goes. 🏏
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