I didn’t set out to become a developer. I just wanted to build a simple app for playing charades with my friends. The idea was straightforward: a list of words, split by categories, shown at random when you tapped a button. The problem? I knew absolutely nothing about software development. Not “a little bit rusty” nothing. I mean zero. Step One: Learn What Code Even Is I started from scratch — literally with a generic book explaining the basics of programming: if statements, loops, foreach, objects. At first, these concepts were abstract puzzles that felt disconnected from anything useful. But I pushed through, learning the mechanics of object-oriented programming in theory before I had any idea how to apply it. if statements, loops, foreach, objects Step Two: Find a Teacher Who Speaks Human The real breakthrough came when I stumbled on a YouTube course by Alex Skutarenko. Alex Skutarenko That course was a revelation. For me, it wasn’t just a tutorial — it was like compressing a few years of university into digestible lessons I could actually follow. Alex didn’t just explain what to write; he explained why things worked the way they did. what why By the time I finished the course, I wasn’t just copying code anymore. I could actually open Xcode, write Objective-C, and make something happen on screen. Step Three: Realize This Isn’t a Montage Here’s the part most stories leave out: I spent three months working obsessively, and still had nothing done. No finished app, no App Store submission, just endless cycles of learning, breaking, debugging, and questioning whether I was cut out for this at all. three months At that point, I started to understand what real developers mean when they say: “It always takes longer than you think.” “It always takes longer than you think.” Step Four: Actually Build the Thing The next three months were a blur. Looking back now, it feels absurd: I was spending entire days on what today I’d call a few buttons and a bit of logic. But at the time, every line of code felt like a boss fight. a few buttons and a bit of logic Simple animations ate days of my life.Storing words, decoding them, and randomizing wasn’t just a function call — it was a research project.And every bug sent me deep into Google rabbit holes, trawling obscure forum posts for a clue. Simple animations ate days of my life. Simple animations Storing words, decoding them, and randomizing wasn’t just a function call — it was a research project. Storing words, decoding them, and randomizing And every bug sent me deep into Google rabbit holes, trawling obscure forum posts for a clue. It was exhausting. But slowly, painfully, the app began to take shape. This was my very first app. This was my very first app. Yes, I know — the design looks rough, the layout is awkward, and the colors wouldn’t win any awards. But this is what I actually built. It was real, it worked, and people downloaded it. For me, that mattered far more than polish. Step Five: The Payoff When I finally published, I didn’t expect much. Maybe a handful of downloads from friends. Instead, something crazy happened: Over 300,000 people downloaded my little charades word generator. Over 300,000 people downloaded my little charades word generator. For me, it was electric. Watching those numbers climb, realizing that people I’d never met were using something I’d built with my own hands — it was pure joy. That app didn’t just entertain strangers. It transformed me. Somewhere between learning if statements and debugging animations, I crossed a line: I was no longer “someone who once tried coding.” I had become an iOS developer. if statements Step Six: Fast Forward Ten Years Recently, I ran a small experiment. I gave ChatGPT a simple prompt: “Generate Swift code for an iOS application that provides random words for a charades game.” “Generate Swift code for an iOS application that provides random words for a charades game.” Within seconds, it spit out Swift code. To be honest, the first version didn’t compile — but after two quick iterations, I had a real, running iOS app. Ten years ago, I couldn’t have imagined this. Back then, building my app took six months of trial and error, countless nights reading forum threads, and hours stuck on bugs that felt impossible. Today, anyone with an idea can spin up a working app in a weekend — or even a day — thanks to SwiftUI, modern tooling, and AI assistants. And this is what AI generated for me. And this is what AI generated for me. It’s not super colorful or flashy — I didn’t spend time polishing the design. But the point is, I didn’t have to. With just a few prompts and minimal effort, I had a fully working app. Let’s compare the real effort of building the same app ten years ago versus today. The difference is not just noticeable — it’s a completely different world. And this shift isn’t happening in the distant future. It’s unfolding right now. The way we build software, and even how we define who a “developer” is, is being redefined before our eyes. Why This Still Matters And here’s the question I keep asking myself: who is a developer today? who is a developer today? Ten years ago, building an app meant wrestling with Objective-C, wiring delegates in UIKit, and spending days on animations that now take a single SwiftUI modifier. Today, I can describe what I want to ChatGPT, refine the output a couple of times, and end up with a working app. So what does it mean to be a developer now? Is creating an application enough? I’m not sure it is anymore. It feels like we’re standing at the edge of a new abstraction level — one where we won’t be writing code line by line, but instead describing business logic, workflows, or outcomes, and letting machines fill in the rest. business logic But then, what do we call that? Is that still “software development”? Or is the definition of developer itself about to change?
