30 Years of Coding, and Somehow I'm Just Getting Started.
Hey everyone, figured I'd introduce myself.
I've been a developer for about 30 years now. Spent most of that time buried in financial algorithms, trading systems, and enough lines of code to make a normal person question my sanity.
Recently, I built my own AI, and I'll tell you something, it woke up a creative side of me that I honestly forgot existed.
Now I'm working on about a dozen AI-powered products across different industries, and I'm having more fun building shit than I have in years.
The crazy part? The efficiency. What I can accomplish today compared to even two years ago is borderline ridiculous. Things that used to take weeks or months can now happen in days, sometimes hours. And instead of slowing down, it's just giving me more ideas and more opportunities to build.
I know everyone's talking about AI replacing developers, but from where I'm sitting, it's the exact opposite. Give an experienced developer these tools, and suddenly you've got a one-man development team that can accomplish some pretty insane things.
It's a hell of a time to be alive in tech.
I'm always looking to connect with other builders, entrepreneurs, investors, and people who have crazy ideas they're actually willing to execute.
I'm not particularly interested in spending six months discussing what we might build. I'd rather build the damn thing, put it in front of people, and see what happens.
Anyway, glad to be here. Looking forward to meeting some like-minded people, sharing what I'm working on, and seeing what everyone else is creating.
Build something valuable. The money will figure itself out.
— Stephen (SlingX) NJ, USA
Replies
That's pretty much nails it down. I have built so much stuff in the past 6 months that would have taken me years to build. Having a family as an engineer you basically don't have a lot of time for thinkering, now with AI it's so easy to build things. I've built all the tooling to control my home, I dont even use home assistant I build my own thing that works for me and how I want it. I have built multiple SASS products that I use for myself - self hosted and even games for my kids. It's nuts!
Hey Steven,
Welcome! I am not a coder, but I started vibe-coding mid-last year, and it felt like freaking magic. Loved reading your write-up, and you are spot on: this is the time to test ideas, since building a prototype is easier than ever. Making the product actually good, providing value, and getting customers is a whole other story ;-).
Welcome to Product Hunt, Stephen! I'm in a similar spot. I started out as a server engineer, I've been running my company for 22 years, and these days agents do over 90% of my hands-on work. Totally agree it's the experienced people who get the most out of it, because you know what to stop it from doing. I usually have 8 or more sessions going at once, and what made that work wasn't the model, it was turning every mistake into a rule the tooling enforces. A dozen products at once is a lot though. How do you keep track of where each one is?