LLMs are amazing and have improved my productivity and engineering related work, from researching new topics and concepts. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though. Being on X, there seems to be a new AI tool every week. Cursor is one of the prime examples. It has gained an unfathomable amount of shilling. Cursor is great, but it’s nowhere close to replacing an engineer. Once you start building something complex with a backend, you’ll realize that you will spend more time debugging the code than writing it.

The whole “AI is going to replace engineers” thing is all a fugazi for now. You still have time to become a software engineer. Maybe in another 7 years it will and only the best engineers will be prominent. The last job that will probably be replaced is engineers. It’s definitely going to be harder due to the best engineers using AI as well to help them compared to you just starting out but it definitely is doable. Just work harder.

Have you ever thought about why this whole AI trend is happening and why it’s so trendy in the news saying that it is going to do all these things and replace YOU. Well, there is some truth to that if you don’t innovate your skills.

Another side to the coin is that AI companies need investments to do research and train their compute. How do VCs know what to invest in and have their ROI? They invest in companies that have perceived future value and the growth potential than what it is currently. Influence enough people and you will get your perceived future value. They get more money to innovate and grow. It’s a marketing tactic in itself. Have the tech elites pay the news companies and influencers to say good things about their product, more people will believe in it and invest. Don’t believe everything you read on the news. It’s all some political marketing agenda.

The vast amount of technical debt will come from being a “prompt engineer” on your work instead of actually being a software engineer. Even an 8 year old can be a prompt engineer and build something simple. It’s no different than someone giving the 8 year old a question from a Math Olympiad problem, solving it and then saying, “OH MY GOD AN 8 YEAR OLD CAN SOLVE A MATH OLYMPIAD PROBLEM!” There is a significant difference between understanding how something actually works and just copying and pasting things while hoping they work.

“The only source of knowledge is experience.”

— Albert Einstein

Technical debt with AI is applicable to every field. Nowadays, a huge percentage of college kids are doing their assignments and projects with AI. I am actually more worried that upcoming doctors are using AI and not understanding what they’re learning. Eventually, you will have to pay the price for your technical debt with work you don’t understand, and not even AI can solve it for you because it is too complex. Remember that AI is trained on data and not anything new.

It’s a double-edged sword. You get to ship things faster, but you might not know how it fully works. Once you build a huge complex system and something breaks down, you won’t even know what is causing the error because you’re just a copy and paster. Then you will have to pay the price of technical debt. I have been able to fix complex bugs faster without using AI. Most of the time when I ask AI to fix a bug, another bug appears. It’s better to just take it into your own hands at that point.

I love writing code and to some extent, using Coding Assistants has taken some of the joy out of it. I also remember more when I write it myself. You can’t keep the training wheels on forever. I also want to do the combo moves on vim, I want to feel like I’m the one making the moves and not the machine doing it for me.

“It’s more fun to be competent”

— DHH

DHH might be right. Promise land might not even exist where AI will do all these things. We cannot guarantee the future.

Never the less, I am not an AI decel. I am rooting for the AI acceleration movement and everyone that is behind it. It looks very promising and there is a bunch of smart and bright people that are working on it that I fully believe that they will make a change. It has drastically changed my life, added tons of value and I am way more productive than without it. Automate the boring stuff and leave more time for things that matter.

Pursuing something is quite the thrill, especially when it’s competitive and rewarding. You start by doing research on how the best people do their work and incorporating it into your routine. As you see your progress, you start practicing and improve bit by bit. Paradoxically, only a very small percentage of people actually commit to this process.

Biologically, we all have competitive instincts. Getting better grades than our peers or achieving a higher rank than our friends in a video game are a few examples. I would say getting out of the “beginner phase” is the easiest part. Everyone would like to think they’re special in some way. But how true is that if you’re the person who conforms to what everyone else is doing?

Fundamentally, it mostly comes down to how you think and approach it. At an early age I was taught about the concept of an “outlier”. How to become one. What makes one. Outliers are always people who stand apart from the norm, producing different results than the joe shmoe. Divergent thinking is rewarding itself, yet the price you have to pay is isolation. Loneliness will bloom if you don’t have your crowd.

Starting something new in an expansive field is overwhelming. We often suck at it, frustration sets in and we might give up and say to ourselves “it’s not for me.” You might be right, but I would say its a coping mechanism 90% of the time. The secret is to just show up. You will eventually get to the middle of the bell curve, where the majority of people who have been working for years end up at. But most will never really be “ahead of the curve”.

Do you have that itch? The itch to be great and better than most? That deep inner desire, that somehow has a deep connection to your soul? The thing that wakes you up in the morning that drives you to get out of bed? Not just because society tells you that you should, but because you really want to? Well then, you’re in luck.

You will surely be wrong at times, but you just have to be right once.The average person is constantly stuck on how other people do their work, what everyone else is doing, and following it. But from my personal experience, I’ve learned that simply following others never leads to breakthroughs or especially nothing exceptional. How do you expect to surpass the majority if you’re not willing to take more risks than they do? The term for taking bold risks, being authentic, and having a following nowadays is called a “trendsetter”

Another huge contributing factor that leads to inaction is self-sabotage. Funny enough, starting is often the hardest part. Once you start and be consistent, momentum keeps you going.

“Strategy is often a euphemism for procrastination.”

— Peter Thiel

A common notion that I frequently ponder is “How do you see the wave when you’re the water?”. It’s quite hard to see the bigger picture when you’re in the middle of it. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Raise the stakes of the game you’re playing. Hanging around people who lack intellectual depth and agency gets draining. Don’t consider cretins your opponents. Raise yourself to the highest standard possible. Be friends and surround yourself with the best. Learn, engage, question, and grow.

Have strong foundations and enjoy the pursuit. Remember why you started in the first place. Don’t self sabotage.

There is no nerd without the nerdiness. Being a nerd is mostly just following your own curiosity and seeing where it leads you. Of course, with a mix of your intellect. I do not have an exact idea on how intellectuals are formed. I presume it is mostly through a mix of a few things, like constantly thinking about a problem, breaking it down, and solving it at the minute level with your own curiosity. Your curiosity in life will lead you to many interesting places. It is like a mental model to be followed. Different types of nerds in different fields and backgrounds in life have led them there. I think if you asked every single nerd how they ended up where they are currently, they would describe certain things they did earlier in life and how they simply enjoyed doing them.

In common society, most would take the easy route, avoiding anything challenging when they can simply do something easy for the rest of their lives. Why would you torture yourself with this “thing” when you can just sit down, watch television, or go on holidays all the time? Yet, I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.

It’s in those moments when you’re out with your friends or family and you are just completely zoned out thinking about something and letting your mind wander over certain ideas or possibilities entertaining your conscience. We enjoy feeding those ideas. It just feels so thrilling and the satisfaction we get once we finally prove ourselves and do it.

If you are in academia, engineering, tech, mathematics or anything related, with a dying passion, you are one of the luckiest people on earth and it is not something to be taken for granted. It’s a gift to have a passion. You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you.

“What feels like play to you, but looks like work to others?” - Naval Ravikant

Without a doubt, ambition drives us. Do not confuse career ambition and who you want to be as a person. Both of these go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other. Making revelations in one’s personal life or field of study will make an impact. Most truths hurt but it is also important for you to come to that truth yourself and not let others impose the truth on you. Once you distinguish between what you like to do and what you can do that for work, you’ll find your play becomes your work. Playing does not mean that you are in a constant state of joy. Learn to enjoy the suffering.

“Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth” - George Gordon Byron

Hence, being a nerd is fruitful in that it can lead to a career. After doing something for so long, like reading or doing what you enjoy, it eventually becomes a part of who you are. To truly flourish as a nerd, try to take the misery out of it and not take yourself too seriously. Some of you may relate, but there comes a certain point when you become so wrapped up in a problem that it starts to impact other areas of your life which will eventually affect the people around you.

Fierce nerds, an essay written by Paul Graham dictates this very well. They take results very personally and are impatient. We may lose sleep, friends, or even our sanity just to solve a problem. Ambition takes over most of your life once you are in this cycle. A cycle that is very hard to get out of. I don’t blame you. It is part of our human tendencies for ambition and conquest. With also relatively few downsides. Striving for something greater and bigger than your own self. Having the moxie to do it as a fierce nerd is one of the most rewarding things there is. Enjoying what you do and getting rich from it. Common examples are starting a biotech/tech startup. We have the financially well off nerds funneling the money towards the ambitious ones to pursue it.

“Up to a point, confidence is a self-fulfilling prophecy” - Paul Graham

Having friends or being able to interact with your nerd community is another great aspect of nerd culture. Finding people who enjoy doing the same things is a challenge itself. Being a curious nerd can lead to a long friendship of countless critical thoughts. If it were so easy, we would have no lonely people struggling to make friends. Nerd societies matter more on intellect rather than looks. As they say, steel sharpens steel. Societies of nerds are great, you meet different types of nerds and learn about various topics, unlike going out with generic college friends, which nowadays often revolves around hooking up, drugs and getting wasted. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, you make memorable experiences to share with your offspring in the near future. But where will those friends lead you down the line? Know what you want. Most people don’t. An empty shell riding throughout their timeline towards an inevitable death.

Nerd societies form over time, you just have to find one of them. It might be a personal thing, but I empathize with most nerds when they say they never really “fit in”. Once you find your “people”, it is like finally being a part of something which you can relate to. When hardworking nerds collaborate and find a goal to strive to, it’s somewhat of an unstoppable force. I believe that to do something very difficult in your life, you need a very deep meaning behind it. Otherwise, you won’t get very far. This is another reason why I believe most tech nerds read philosophy or something similar. It has to resonate and make you feel something. Almost like brainwashing yourself and being delusional in a way.

An example of this is a bunch of nerds forming Artificial Intelligence and social media platforms, which indefinitely transformed human societies in ways we would have never thought of. Want to buy something from across the country? No problem. How about asking a machine to write me an essay on world war II but make it sound like Donald Trump wrote it? Again, no problem. Whatever it is, it empowers people. New jobs are created, new relationships are formed, new knowledge is being generated.

Nerds are somewhat steps ahead of general people. As a young nerd, you might feel older than your peers, but that’s because you are focusing on real world problems instead of playing some zero sum games. Remember, time is constantly ticking, so do what matters to you. Without a doubt life is a game, but there are many different types to choose from. Choose wisely which game you’ll play.

“Play stupid games, win stupid Prizes”

Nowadays, I think of everything as a game. While you can play games and waste your time of course, people with high agency don’t. You don’t want to look back and regret what you could have been, so give it your all. If you are not a conformist, you will create your own path, not some bullshit which institutions and societies make you believe you have to choose. The path which is different and irregular. Historically, everything great has come from something unconventional. With the knowledge available today, everything is out there for the taking. Think abundance. Being comfortable with who you are and knowing yourself is what makes the ascension of “the nerd”. You cannot build a lasting empire upon foundations of sand.

The paradox of personal change

Most people desire change, a metamorphosis of some sort. We all seek a “better” version of ourselves, one that aligns more closely with our ideologies, ethics, and morals. We evolve every day, slowly but surely. But are we becoming who we actually want to be? Are we living our day-to-day lives knowing what we truly want from the only life we have?

Or perhaps, we are unconsciously living according to another person’s dogmas, beliefs, and expectations.

The journey of change is arduous. Many want change, but few want it badly enough to pursue it seriously. If I gave you a perfect recipe for transformation, would you take it seriously? People often resist and don’t even take prescriptions given. Why? Because no one likes being told what to do.

Don’t believe me? Everything that you could possibly want is out there and is yours for the taking, if you haven’t even begun on the first “how?” you may not really want it at all.

Finding meaning

Doing new things is important. If it interests you now, it will probably interest you in the future. Nearly everything in this world is probably done because of someone’s interest or passion. The phone you’re using, the shoes and clothes you wear, countless other items around you, the ideas and execution of it - all created with a passion. Even this essay that you are reading too. Everything, it’s all most likely because someone has found it interesting.

So, do you want to do something interesting? I’d say do it. I live by a few questions actually. I haven’t really finalized them in any way but it goes along the line of “Would I regret not doing this in a few years from now?”.

Sometimes, things in your life may not make any sense at all. I’ve experienced this too. No matter how hard I try to rationalize, I can’t always find out the “why” behind every situation. But belief is very important. As Steve Jobs once said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Often, I sit down and reflect, then realize “the dots have connected”.But what if you feel that have no dots to connect? The answer is simple: Do more things, especially things that are interesting to you. Remember the “you” is very important. By following your interests and passions, you create more dots, and eventually, they will connect in meaningful ways.

[[Author’s Note: Wrote this essay with no preconceptions, just going with the flow for today. Hope you enjoyed it :)]]