AI Didn’t Make Me Faster. It Made Me Think Better.

I wrote recently about some concerns I have with how our industry is starting to treat AI. This isn’t that. Because the truth is, AI has also made me better at what I do. Not faster. Not necessarily more productive in the way people like to measure it. Better. And the more I’ve thought about it, the closest analogy I’ve found isn’t in software at all. It’s in the forge. When I was learning blacksmithing, I wasn’t just being shown how to hit steel. I was learning how to think about it. How heat changes behavior. How structure forms over time. How small decisions early on show up later in ways you can’t undo. And more than anything, I learned by asking questions. Not just "how do I do this?" But "what would happen if I did it this way instead?" Sometimes the answer came from the person teaching me. Sometimes the answer came from trying it and seeing what happened. But the learning came from having a place where those questions could exist. Most of my career has been spent in backend engi