Work Before Work
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My relationship with programming has always been push-pull. Back in 5th grade, my school's curriculum introduced QBASIC to a very puzzle-loving me and then decided to do away with it next year. They reintroduced programming back in the form of an unenforced class for HTML and CSS, but it didn't have the fun, puzzle-like feel I'd loved. I then skipped computer science as a subject in high school.
As I continued to be intrigued by programming during my time studying engineering, a combination of my class of already exposed-to-coding folks and some old-school microprocessor coding caused me to completely give up.
My early career in design showed me the adjacent world of software engineering. Backend, frontend, database, queries, APIs, SQL, Agile, Git, sprint planning - you name it, I saw it all. It also showed me how vast it really is and just how much it takes to really do something well.
I chickened out and decided to observe it from afar instead.
The 5th grader never stopped peeking in.
I can finally see myself "coding".
My knowledge is, of course, limited by what makes a software system robust. Best case - I can get it to function. What if there are those pesky upgrades I've heard so much about? How do I handle backward compatibility? How does security even work?
I've looked into a few tools that are out in the market to help break the ice and have decided to go with Cursor simply because the website said that "it is the best way to code with AI".
AI agents have at least removed a barrier for non-programmers like me - I can finally try this out.
