I’m a programmer by trade. Been working with software for years, and fell in love with it about a decade ago, when I first got introduced to it through my “programming with C” course in college.

Although I dropped out, my bachelor was in Automation Engineering, precisely because it showed a little bit about all other areas I was interested in – electrical, mechanical, computer science, instrumentation.

Little did I know that technology would grab my attention so. The critical thinking it requires, the level of research and learning involved, the predictability of it all appealed to me at a personal level – it spoke to my preferred way of thinking.

And amidst this environment I thrived. Software development incentivized my love for learning and grokking things, and got me to a way of living I really appreciated.

This, however, has changed somewhat in the last few months. I couldn’t tell you when, exactly, but my relationship with it shifted, little by little, up to a point where I started to resent my work, and wasn’t feeling the once so present sense of accomplishment and self-betterment.

I started to identify this as a resentment towards my workflow and work environment, spanning from a displeasure towards technology and, most importantly, AI.

Integrating AI in my workflow, as I now understand, has slowly started to shift the way I felt about software development, more so due to a somewhat cliche existential questioning: where do I fit in?

The exactitude of programming and computation leads one to believe that AI will, eventually, encompass software development and cause this area to, at best, change almost entirely. At worst, disappear completely.

If that’s the case, where do I, as a developer, belong in this area of creation? Why do I feel so shallow nowadays when writing code? What is it about using AI for software development that has made my perspective towards it change so?

This remained unanswered for a long while, until I recently read “Steal like an artist”, by Austin Kleon. The core concept of the first chapter is how stealing ideas is paramount to the learning and growth of an artist. It’s how artists develop their sense of self and learn to identify their own language.

I then realized that the feeling I’m missing from programming is being creative. The creativity process is detrimental to my learning flow, and it’s through that process that I, as a person, feel most strongly towards leaving my mark, expressing myself. Using AI tools, therefore, has been robbing me of my creative expression in my work.

This is why I decided to create this environment. To grow as an individual, I must nourish my yearn to learn, to steal, to be creative, to be myself – be it in software development or in any other creative media.

I don’t tend to write, so this is my first step towards that. My goal with No AI, Just me is to explore my creativity away from AI, using as much analog tooling and source material as I’m able to.

I also hope you may be inspired, like I was!