From Frustration to Flow: How AI is Reshaping My Coding Journey (And Can Reshape Yours)

The world of software development is electrifying right now, isn’t it? If you’re anything like me, you’re seeing a constant stream of innovations on X and YouTube, with AI tools like Cursor, Lovable, Bolt, Replit, V0, and powerful LLMs such as GPT-4, Claude Sonnet, and others, transforming how we build. It’s a magnificent technological shift happening right before our eyes.

My Journey: Entrepreneur, Educator, Product Builder

My name is Davor. For two decades, I’ve been a digital entrepreneur, running a large agency with over 700 clients and 55 employees. For 15 years, I’ve created online courses on digital skills, including coding, reaching thousands of students. And for 30 years, since I was a kid, I’ve been building and coding.

But here’s the thing: I’ve always been more of an entrepreneur, a product-oriented person. My passion lies in building stuff, creating apps, and solving problems—often my own. While I’ve delved deep into web and mobile development, I’ve always focused on the outcome.

The Traditional Coding Maze: Why It’s So Hard

Let’s be honest: becoming a truly great software developer is tough. You can learn the fundamentals, build a few projects, and get familiar with React, Next.js, Vue, or Svelte. But the tech ecosystem is vast. When you start building your own unique app, even with common features like authentication or user management, problems inevitably arise. You accidentally break something, or a tool’s version changes, introducing new complexities. Building a stable application, even an MVP, can feel like an uphill battle.

Before the AI revolution, if you hit a snag, you’d scour Stack Overflow, ask on Reddit, or text a more experienced developer friend. It was slow. Unique problems could lead to days of frustrating, discouraging debugging. Many, like myself—not full-time developers—simply gave up. The time investment to learn, build, and fix bugs was immense.

The Hiring Hurdle: Another Layer of Complexity

“Maybe I should hire someone,” you might think. But that’s often not fun, it’s expensive, and communication can be a challenge. A freelance developer takes your specs, builds for a week or two, and then you see your vision for the first time. Often, what you thought you wanted doesn’t quite work in practice. This iterative process is long, frustrating, and costly if changes mean significant rewrites. Finding a developer who truly gets your vision and also has design sense? That’s another quest entirely.

The Dream: Building Your Own Thing, Your Way

Ultimately, what many of us want is to bring a dream project to life, solve our own problems, or launch a side-hustle SaaS. We want to enjoy the process, figure things out, and put our personal signature on an app. For a long time, this felt out of reach.

AI Tools: The Dawn of a New Era

Then came the AI tools. It’s simply amazing how well, how fast, and how effectively they work. If you’re reading this, you’re likely intrigued by this promise. Maybe you’ve experimented with Cursor or already have a foundation in React or Next.js. That’s fantastic.

The AI coding space is evolving at lightning speed, with billions poured into its development. It can feel overwhelming. You try building an app in Cursor and realize it’s not always a straight path. These tools, while powerful, introduce their own set of challenges. Achieving that flow state, where your ideas seamlessly translate into functional code, can still be elusive.

The Skeptic’s Corner: Why Experienced Devs Sometimes Miss the Point

Read through forums or social media, and you’ll find frustration alongside the excitement. Experienced developers, already skilled in traditional coding, sometimes smirk at AI tools, viewing them as mere advanced autocompletion. They miss a crucial point: they already possess the skills AI aims to augment or even provide.

These AI tools are a completely different animal, perfect for people like you and me. They’re geared towards those drawn to no-code platforms like Bubble or WordPress, or automation tools like Make.com and Zapier. These tools empowered individuals with ideas but without the deep coding expertise. AI coding is the next evolution. I believe traditional no-code/low-code is in for a shake-up; AI-driven development will only get better, becoming insanely great in the coming years.

Opportunity Knocks: The AI Coding Gold Rush

AI coding tools open up incredible opportunities:

Build and launch your own indie apps as a solopreneur.
Create MVPs for startups and raise funding.
Develop a lucrative agency building MVPs for others. Many are already earning significantly, not as traditional coders, but by partnering with AI.

This brings me to why I’m so passionate about this space. For the last two years, I’ve been immersed in this new world: exploring how to best leverage these AI tools, building apps, and continuously learning React, Next.js, DevOps—everything needed to be a truly efficient and, importantly, joyful AI-assisted coder.

The goal is to feel in control, to know what you’re doing, and to use these powerful levers effectively. It’s not just about prompt engineering; that’s a small piece of the puzzle. It’s about understanding the tools, navigating problems, and quickly grasping the underlying mechanics. The insights I’ve gained have been so transformative that I’m planning to distill them into a comprehensive guide or course in the future, to help others embark on this journey.

Embracing the New Paradigm

I’ve always believed in the power of learning by doing, and AI supercharges this.

Learn by Doing, Amplified by AI: AI coding is the best learning accelerator I’ve encountered. You have a problem or an idea, you collaborate with an AI “co-pilot” to build the solution, and then you study the generated code. You connect the dots, build experience, and learn from AI’s “thought process,” even its mistakes and debugging steps.
Resourcefulness and Control: The key is learning how to orchestrate these tools, synchronize them, and always feel in control. Even when you get stuck, you’ll develop the skills to feel secure in finding a path forward.
Unlock Speed and Confidence: Security breeds confidence, and confidence unlocks speed. You’ll build rapidly, understand what the AI is doing, and know how to navigate any issues that arise. This is incredibly empowering.

My own enjoyment and confidence in building have skyrocketed. I’m convinced that by embracing these tools, anyone can build something amazing, something the world needs, and achieve their goals, perhaps even transform their career, as this journey is transforming mine.

Join the Exploration: Build Your Future, Today

I encourage you to start your own AI coding exploration. Dive in, experiment, and see what you can create. The AI landscape is evolving daily; the sooner you engage, the sooner you’ll harness its power. If you’re exploring this path and have questions, want to share your experiences, or are looking for a bit of guidance, feel free to reach out. I’m passionate about connecting with others navigating this exciting new terrain.

Many online videos and posts offer glimpses but often lack the depth needed to truly build with confidence and understanding. That’s the gap I hope to help bridge, eventually with more structured insights and a full learning path. For now, the most important step is to begin.

You’ll be joining a growing wave of individuals—innovators, creators, and entrepreneurs—who are not just using AI, but partnering with it to build the future. We’re not just geeks trying to be super powerful building apps with AI; we are also often business-focused and product-minded people who wish to extract value from our creations.

Thank you for reading. I hope this inspires you to start your AI coding adventure.