After 20 Years in IT, I Met Claude After Work — and Was Left Speechless

hyukjin — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:56:27 +0000

I can't code.

To be precise, I thought I couldn't. Even though I had been in the IT industry for over 20 years, I was always on the side of "using technology." Someone who planned, operated, and wrote improvement requests for systems built by developers. Code was a language outside my domain.

Yet, in December 2025, I sat alone after work and made a game. In just five minutes.

I didn't even know what "Vive Coding" was

Starting late last year, the term "Vive Coding" kept appearing in the media. It meant that if you explained things verbally to an AI, it would generate code for you; honestly, I was skeptical at first. What was I, a non-developer, supposed to be making?

Then, out of curiosity, I opened the Claude artifact. And I just tried it out.

"Make me an Arkanoid game."

About 30 seconds passed. A brick-breaking game appeared on the screen. The ball bounced, the paddle moved, and the bricks broke. It actually played.

It didn't even take five minutes.

** I stared blankly at the screen for a while. I was speechless. A 20-year veteran of the IT industry, someone who had never properly coded before, had just created a game.

Is this actually possible?

Shock was followed by greed

Something clicked open inside my head.

If it can be a game—couldn't the tasks I struggled with in Excel every day also be possible?

At work, I was managing access permissions using Excel. A spreadsheet of hundreds of rows. When the person in charge changed, I had to fix it manually; when an audit came in every season, I had to compile everything by hand again; and if an error occurred, I had to start over from scratch. I had been repeating that for years.

"I think I can turn this into a program."

I started immediately that night.

A few minutes to a prototype, a few weeks to a system

I explained the situation to Claude. What data needed to be managed, what features were required. Without a single development term, I wrote it out in business language.

A working prototype emerged in just a few minutes.

Of course, that wasn't the end of it. What I created with Artifact was strictly for demonstration purposes. To actually use it at the company, I needed a proper system. So, I moved to Claude Code. By myself, after work, little by little.

And a working permission management system was completed.

The reason this was such a shock is:

For 20 years, I used to write requests to development teams. "I need this feature." Then, it would get pushed down the priority list, and I would either get a response six months later or it wouldn't happen at all.

But now—I build what I need myself.

There is no need to wait. There is no need to write manuals. I create the tools myself for the tasks I know best.

The feeling that I, who had been a "user of technology" for 20 years, had become a "creator of technology." That was the biggest shock.

Since then

That was the beginning.

Since then, I have created four Obsidian plugins. People are actually using them, and the response is positive. While I plan AI Transformation (AX) at work, I build various things using Vive Coding after work. These days feel like the most interesting time of my 20 years in the IT industry.

This blog is a record of that journey.

It is the story of someone who knows nothing about coding creating something together with AI. It is the story of planning AI transitions in the field at a large corporation while simultaneously building tools myself. It is the story of a 20-year veteran becoming a beginner again.