learning
I built a 3D game engine with AI before Opus 4.8 and learned a lot
A while back, before Opus 4.8 dropped, I gave myself a challenge: build a real 3D game engine from scratch with AI, and see how far I could actually push it. It was never meant to ship. No product, no users, no roadmap. Just me trying to learn what building with AI really feels like when you go deep on something genuinely hard. Three weeks later I had a working 3D engine. Plenty of it broke along the way, and I rewrote things more times than I'd like to admit. But that's exactly where the learning was. AI didn't hand me an engine. It handed me a thousand decisions I still had to make and understand myself. Posting a video of it here because this is what DevConnect is for: real things people build with AI, rough edges and all. Curious from anyone who's tried something similar: what's the hardest thing you've built with AI just to learn, not to ship?
Build Before You Feel Ready
You don't become a better developer by knowing everything. You become better by learning, building, breaking things, and trying again. There will always be a new framework, language, AI tool, or technology to learn. You don't need to master everything. Pick something, build with it, and learn along the way. Share your projects, ask questions, get feedback, and connect with other developers. Sometimes one conversation can teach you more than hours of tutorials. Learn. Build. Share. Connect. Repeat. What are you building right now?
I quit AI for 7 days.
I quit AI for 7 days. No ChatGPT. No Claude. No Copilot. No AI for coding, studying, writing, research, or brainstorming. And honestly? The hardest part wasn’t solving problems. It was realizing how quickly I had become uncomfortable with solving them myself. On Day 1, I kept reaching for AI whenever I got stuck. By Day 3, something changed. Instead of asking: “What's wrong with this code?” I started asking: “What do I THINK is wrong?” That tiny difference made me slow down, form hypotheses, read documentation, make mistakes, and actually remember what I learned. The biggest lesson? AI wasn’t the problem. My dependency on instant answers was. I came out of those 7 days not wanting to use AI less… I wanted to use it better. Because the goal isn't to stop using AI. The goal is to make sure you can still think when the AI isn't there. I wrote about the full 7-day experiment here: https://medium.com/@hasheramin/i-quit-ai-tools-for-7-days-heres-what-happened-cae2bbf3f3fb?sharedUserId=hasheramin Now I'm curious: If every AI tool disappeared tomorrow, how much of your work could you still do on your own ??? AI ArtificialIntelligence SoftwareEngineering Programming Learning Productivity Developer Technology