ARTICLE
My career has taken a series of unexpected turns. I began as an engineer with a background in electronics and telecommunications. Learning about microprocessors, controllers, frequencies, mobile and satellite communication, cell towers and more. It was fascinating I'm not gonna lie.
Honestly, I might still be in that field if we had focused purely on our discipline instead of juggling electrical engineering, computer science and everything in between. While those subjects were necessary, learning them for four years straight felt like a “good at everything, best at nothing” approach.
When coding felt like a trap
What frustrated me the most and one of the biggest reasons I initially hated coding was how everything seemed to be geared towards one thing - landing a job as a software engineer in the IT sector. It felt like our entire degree was designed to feed the IT industry. Coding never interested me back then, and being forced into it only made me dislike it more. It felt like we spent four years learning something that didn’t really belong to us. If coding was the ultimate goal, why not just study computer science? I can’t help but relive those times and feel frustrated just thinking about it.
Rediscovering the Connection
Fast forward to the present, things are not quite what I expected. It started with a simple goal - I wanted to bring my designs to life and give clients a smoother, more immersive experience. I began experimenting with Wix Studio, which turned out to be an excellent entry point. The editor has a built-in interaction panel that let me animate elements visually, without touching code. That’s cool, right? But then you might ask, “If you added animations without code, how did it help you?” Well, it helped me indirectly. Behind every animation, there was a logic - the why's and how's that slowly pulled me into problem-solving and aiming for much more complex animations.
Without realizing, I was already trying to think like a web developer. 'What will trigger this animation?', 'In what order should the elements animate while still feeling natural?', 'What about the timing and easing?' and so on. These questions guided me in providing the best prompts to ChatGPT, which often provided me with the code that worked without any modifications. It wasn't just Wix Studio though. Looking at some of the most beautifully designed sites on Awwwards (Immersive Garden <3) gave me the motivation to do something like that myself. Not to mention, I was using Wix IDE which made me look like a hacker with, lol.
The Shift with VS Code
As I began using more custom code, I wanted a more comfortable workspace for coding that looked cleaner, customizable and something that would work well with the "Work With" option in ChatGPT. I’d heard about VS Code, so I decided to give it a try.
Okay, the first thing I did after installing was adding a theme, icon packs and some what I consider as important extensions like Prettier and Minify. Setting all that took some time but once done, writing code was like a whole another experience. It was satisfying and it looked so much better. No more squeezing into a 1200x200 window! I could finally see structure, indentation and errors clearly.
The best part? VS Code works perfectly with ChatGPT’s “Work with” feature. Instead of copying and pasting code back and forth, I was able to edit specific lines directly. That tiny feature saved hours - and made me give coding another chance.
Learning without pressure
I’m not calling myself a coder nor do I intend to become one. I use ChatGPT to write code. But now, I can read it, fix small errors, and understand developers in a way I couldn’t before. That understanding changes everything: collaboration, timelines and respect for the process.
I never thought I’d say this, but writing code, even a few lines feels rewarding now. Maybe I was never against coding itself but against how it was taught. Funny how the thing I once avoided turned out to make me better at what I enjoy.