i am tired of using ai. do not mistake this as me hating ai; i do not.

this is a rant. i have been using as a power user since past 2 months. my speed of deployments can not be higher; unless i create myself as an agent.

but, and it is a big but.

a little background

before i go into a rant and a solution, here is a little ado. i am a software engineer (if even i can call myself that). 3 years of working full time in early stage startups. the pace is on the higher site (i am downplaying it).

what i need is balance. i am power user when it comes to my work at office. i have not written a single line of code since 2 months. yes, we exist. at the same time, i have been keeping myself sane by coding the old way, no autocomplete, no ai, no claude code when it comes to tinkering at home.

here is another chain of thought. the future is uncertain. go to X, you will find that AI is everything. but when i talk to my friends at larger companies, they are untouched with ai. with the little experience of life that i have, i can definitely say that we will never be certain on what will happen in the next year, especially with these smart ai.

so the question aries, "do i become pro ai? do i become anti ai?". my answer is simple, "play both sides". why commit? companies building ai is not paying me; neither are companies who are against ai (i am pretty sure there are companies like these). play both sides, be an advocate of both. stay fluid. this advice is not for the 1% percenter who are at the front foot of changing the world with ai. if you are an engineer at Anthropic, Codex, Gemini, keep up the good work. for the rest of us, we (read i) need to prepare for both the scenarios.

and so we come back to the answer of "the balance". but what does it mean? for some you reading this, it can be a split of 80-20. 80% coding with ai, 20% decisions by you. it can also be 60-40 and any other combination that works for you. personally, i am going to have 100-0 split. 100% ai usage at work. 0% at home (read personal projects).

the lack of struggle

here is a small story from when i started coding. the very first time, going from a blank page to this

TODO - insert image of the very first site that i made

yes, this is what i made as my very code.

a proposal

i am going to build something, very random. this will do nothing. and i mean absolutely nothing. a simple coded by hand, crafted imperfectly with the little knowledge about coding that i still remember.

the why?

there is no why. i want to practice and stay in touch with my non ai side.