By Priyanshu Maity
If someone had told me a few years ago that I'd be spending most of my day building AI applications, I probably wouldn't have believed them.
I'm Priyanshu Maity, an 18-year-old AI Engineer and Full-Stack Developer from Kolkata, India. I'm still a student, and like most people my age, I'm figuring things out as I go. The difference is that somewhere along the way I became obsessed with artificial intelligence.
This isn't a story about becoming an overnight expert. It's about staying curious long enough to build something worthwhile.
It started with curiosity
I've always enjoyed understanding how things work.
At first, it was computers. Then programming. After that, web development. Every new topic opened the door to another one.
Eventually I discovered large language models and machine learning.
The idea that software could understand language, reason through problems, and help people solve real tasks completely changed how I looked at programming.
I wasn't interested in using AI just because it was trending. I wanted to understand what was happening behind the scenes.
I spent more time building than watching tutorials
One mistake I made early on was watching too many tutorials.
It feels productive, but after a while you realize you've learned how to follow instructions—not how to solve problems.
Things changed when I started building my own projects.
Some of them failed.
Some of them were messy.
Most of them were never published.
But every single one taught me something that another YouTube video couldn't.
Debugging your own code is where real learning starts.
Learning AI wasn't as complicated as I expected
When people hear "Artificial Intelligence," they often imagine complicated mathematics or research papers that only PhD students can understand.
That scared me too.
But I learned that you don't have to know everything on day one.
I started with the basics, experimented with APIs, read documentation, broke things, fixed them, and slowly began understanding how AI systems fit together.
Over time I became interested in areas like:
- Generative AI
- Machine Learning
- AI Agents
- Prompt Engineering
- Automation
- Legal Technology (LegalTech)
The more I built, the more confident I became.
Building real projects changed everything
There's a huge difference between saying you know AI and actually building something people can use.
Real projects force you to think about users, performance, edge cases, databases, APIs, and deployment—not just model outputs.
That's when programming became much more interesting to me.
I stopped chasing certificates and started chasing better projects.
Being 18 isn't an advantage or a disadvantage
One thing people often point out is my age.
Yes, I'm 18 years old, and I'm from Kolkata.
But once you're writing code, none of that really matters.
The compiler doesn't care how old you are.
Users don't care either.
They only care if what you build works.
I'm still learning
One thing I've realised is that technology moves too fast for anyone to know everything.
Every week there's a new model, framework, or tool.
Instead of trying to learn everything, I try to stay consistent.
Read.
Build.
Break things.
Fix them.
Repeat.
That approach has taught me far more than trying to memorise every new trend.
Looking ahead
I'm excited about where AI is going over the next few years, and I want to keep building products that solve real problems.
There's still a lot I don't know, and honestly, that's the part I enjoy the most.
Learning never really stops in software development.
And I hope it never does.
Thanks for reading.
I'm Priyanshu Maity, an 18-year-old AI Developer and Full-Stack Developer from Kolkata, India. I regularly share what I'm learning about AI, software engineering, and the projects I'm building.
If you're also learning AI, I'd love to hear what you're working on in the comments.
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