How to proceed

Current world of software development doesnt make much sense to me.

I started this journey when I was in a dark state of mind. Anxiety and depression were on my back 24/7.
I always had great hopes for myself regarding doing something cool and challenging. Unfortunately I picked wrong school and got stuck in chemistry. If you imagine software development as something extremely open and being able to express yourselves... Chemistry is the polar opposite. Everything needs to be by the book... Having my favorite child cartoon "Dexters Laboratory" in mind... I thought that chemistry was the place to be if you wanted to discover new things and do experiments etc... Boy was I fucking wrong.

Then 8 years ago I decided to switch professions - I got an internship position.

I got to learn everything from scratch - the feeling of learning was really exuberant for me. Internship was with a web agency that made ecommerce and special websites with intricate designs.

So I started with PHP + Wordpress.

It was really confusing at first - everything seemed like a mountain to climb... How does templating work? SCSS? Following the UI design... Special header for a website in Wordpress? Intimidating.

Fortunately I had a great mentor - everything was explained to me and I could go back and correct things based on the feedback that I received. I valued feedback - I still value it deeply.

Since I had interest and additional motivation because I fucked most of my 20s with wrong profession I grew pretty fast.

I learned a lot! Tried a lot! Learned to not fear to click scary button stuff - just have a backup before doing so...

I grew inside that company and within 5 years I was leading development on custom projects for valued customers.

But my craving for more was getting to me... I had a feeling like I hit a plateau... Most of my learning was becoming how to talk to customer - and how to more efficiently sell more features. I had developed a stronger sense for development and I started seeing bad developers around me - people who didnt care.

It was hard for me to understand since programming was something that saved me from anxiety and depression... and now people are taking this profession for granted. Most of them didnt had to work 13 hour night shifts before getting to this point. So I guess their perception window was really narrow...

I made a decision to switch jobs - but I wanted to really find a place where I could learn more - and new language - PHP was really an abstraction... and working with Pimcore mostly it was abstraction over abstraction over abstraction... sad.

I found Go language.

I loved it.

I dedicated a lot of free time to it.

Made a really big application with it - wanted to try out mobile development so I used it for backend. It was really fun! I missed this...

Day came when I found a new job.

Work was better - but coworkers were a let down again...

Even worse... We were only 2 seniors at the company and the other one wanted to abstract everything even if there was no need for it... All the benefits that I saw in Go were butchered by this guy...

At the same time AI made a breakthrough - OpenAI and Claude were hot cakes.

I didnt want to be left behind so I started using it...

I knew that if I use it to autocomplete stuff - I would loose syntax knowledge pretty soon... So I accepted that I would only use the web application.

I used repomix for additional context on the project.

And I made a lot of things happen with it.

But I learned absolutely nothing. Nothing.

Yeah I solved a lot of new problems... but looking back... I dont think I could replicate that solution because I used AI to solve it.

I felt disgusting.

I felt like a fake. I am a fake...

Perception of the whole industry changed for me...

I thought about changing professions... but pay was really good and I accumulated all this knowledge and I would be wasting it for something new... I am stuck with this.

But I decided after 3 years of my Go ark that I want a new ark - I am not going to just stand around and accept things if I can make a difference.

Reduce AI usage as much as possible.
It is still a tool - but dont bet everything on it.

Learn a low level language - C

Learn a new branch of programming - Game development

But dont learn a framework... You become a framework developer... I dont want that - I was that person in the PHP.
Go opened my eyes that you can create without much more effort things from the ground. Thank you for that... I appreciate it greatly!

I want to learn low level programming in combination with learning more about math, rendering to the screen, talking to OS directly...

Casey Muratori is guiding light in my ark.

I just need to put in the effort again and improve.