As AI dawns on the software industry (and world) it has consumed much of my experimentation, learning, and career growth. This has tilted my growth towards learning about this new tool, its capabilities, and attempting to stay astride of a rapidly changing landscape.

Much of this experimentation has centered around leveraging AI to stay competitive in what is increasingly reported as a hostile job market. This, frankly, has come at the cost of seeking to further my own domain knowledge and expertise.

In my experience the focus on robot herding and ensuring reliable output has placed the spotlight on my ability to think through a high level plan, gather any necessary context or guidelines, write up a set of steps, and send it into the machine. I think I’m pretty okay at this and it’s a huge part of being a Software Engineer.

However, another huge part of what drew me to this career was solving problems. Not just through thought but action and implementation. I find a lot of learning through doing, even if that doing is rooted in applying smarter people’s thoughts to whatever I’m seeking to solve.

There’s enjoyment in doing and understanding.

And so, this is the beginning of a (hopefully monthly) series where I choose something I want to understand and learn about it.

I’ll do a small project with it.

And I’ll write about it.

All manually.

2026-02-28