I've been writing code for about five years professionally. If you count the years where I was just Googling "why is my div not centering" at 2am, it goes back to 2017. I started my first real job in 2020. And for most of that time, it was just me and the editor. No autocomplete magic, no chat window, no "here's your entire feature, boss." Just me, the docs, and a lot of console.log.
Then AI happened to me. Slowly, then all at once.
This is the story of how I got faster than I've ever been in my life, and somehow started feeling like a stranger to my own code.
The Copilot warning I ignored
My first taste was GitHub Copilot. And look, it was cool. It finished my thoughts before I finished them. It felt like pair programming with someone who never took a lunch break.
