Looking at My Compass Again

AI helped me with the grammar in this post.

For the last couple of weeks, I was on holiday. I tried not to think about programming. I wanted to get some distance and give myself time to think—something I often don’t have during daily work.

When I work on many projects, it is so easy to get into a reactive state. There is always something to do, to fix, or to improve, and more projects to juggle. That leaves me with less time to think: where am I going? What is important to me?

The holiday was an occasion to get some distance again, to look at my compass and my map. I didn’t discover a new direction. I was rather reminding myself where I was going and what goal was important to me. That goal is to become a better programmer.

What does that actually mean? For me, it means understanding systems and how their different parts work together. I want to understand what impact a small change in code has on the overall system. I want to be able to explain why I made that change, but also understand why other people made their decisions.

I also see a place for AI in this. Writing faster is becoming normal now. AI writes code. But I want to use AI consciously: to write code, analyze it, and deepen my own understanding. It is important to me that I don’t sacrifice quality for speed.