I was sitting here tonight, looking at code being generated in seconds and suddenly felt this wave of nostalgia for 9 years ago when I started web development. Those days when our worth as developers came from our own hands and minds, not from how well we could prompt an AI.

Those were the days, weren’t they? When “developer” meant something different. When we were craftspeople, not prompt engineers.

Remember when:

• We spent hours reading documentation and blogs to understand third-party libraries?
• Getting upvotes on your Stack Overflow answer made your whole day better?
• Seeing those GitHub stars on your project felt like real achievement?
• Having a dark green GitHub contribution graph was a badge of honor?
• Solving a tough bug at 2AM gave you that amazing “I’m a genius!” feeling?
• You actually knew how things worked under the hood because you had to?
• Writing clear documentation got you real compliments from team members?
• Code reviews helped everyone learn and improve together?

Anyone else remember lying awake at night, your mind still coding? Those nights when you’d fall asleep thinking about arrays and wake up with the solution? When your dreams were full of pushing and pulling friends into arrays, sorting algorithms, and function calls? When your brain was so deep in the code that real life started to feel like just another method being called? Man, we were living and breathing this stuff in a way that feels different now.

Back in university, I remember showing my coding skills to our programming instructor and helping my classmates. The way they looked at me with real respect and wonder when I showed them my client projects (yes, I was already working with real clients during university!) meant everything to me.

Their appreciation was pure because they knew it was ALL my work. Every line of code represented real learning and effort.

Now? When someone shows their work, there’s often that doubt in people’s eyes – “They probably just used AI for that.” That sparkle of appreciation has dimmed because the assumption is that AI did the hard parts. We look at each other’s work differently now, with a hint of doubt that wasn’t there before.

Back in 2018-2020 (pre-COVID times), I was working with a Denmark based company on a digital transformation project. Within this bigger project was a small but crucial event scheduling module that had incredibly complex logic. My client thought this module alone would take at least a month to complete. I remember working late nights trying to figure it out, hitting roadblocks and finding breakthroughs. Somehow I finished this challenging module in just ONE WEEK.

When I showed it to the client, their surprise and happiness was worth all the hard work. That feeling of accomplishment was so special.

Today, that same complex logic could probably be done in 1-2 hours with AI help. Yes, we’re more productive now. Yes, we finish work faster. But that deep satisfaction of solving something truly difficult with just your brain and effort… that felt different and more rewarding.

Local meetups were different too. When developers shared their latest projects, everyone was truly impressed because they knew real effort went into creating it. Nobody assumed “AI probably did most of the work.”

I’m not saying AI is bad – I use it every day and it’s amazing for getting work done quickly. But there was something special about that time when every semicolon, every function, every clever solution came from US. When we wore our tiredness like badges of honor.

Remember that feeling of belonging to a special group? When another developer would look at your solution and nod with genuine respect because they KNEW the journey it took to get there?

Those pre-COVID, pre-AI days shaped us. They built in us a strength and deep understanding that I sometimes worry the next generation may never fully experience.

To my fellow developers of the pre-AI coding days: what moment from those days still makes you proud? What do you miss that you never thought you would? And have you found anything in today’s AI-assisted world that gives you that same feeling?

Fahad Murtaza, Qasim Hussain, Ihtisham Khan, Malik Jamal, Fahad Mahmood, Faraz Ahmed and Mian Shahzad Raza – you all were coding before AI took over. What do you think? And to all the other developers I might not know personally who were building things in that pre-AI era – I’d love to hear your thoughts too.

I keep wondering: what’s the “GitHub stars” of today? What gives developers that same rush of pride and accomplishment now? Sure, we can enjoy finishing projects faster and delivering more quickly. But is there something that matches that deep satisfaction we got from solving complex problems on our own? From contributing to open source? From answering tough questions on Stack Overflow and seeing the upvotes roll in?

(If this post brought back memories, share it with the developers who were there with you… I bet they’re feeling this too)