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[ARTICLE · art-41262] src=dev.to ↗ pub= topic=developer-tools verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Back to school

A developer decided to build a personal website from scratch by hand, writing every line of code without boilerplate, to regain confidence and understand the code that AI tools produce. The developer, who first wrote HTML in 2009 but has since relied on WordPress, aims to refresh skills and overcome feelings of fraudulence from using AI coding assistants like Claude.

read1 min views1 publishedJun 26, 2026

I believe coding is a superpower.

It forces us to think logically and solve problems in real world using technology.

And its actually hard.

However, Andrew did a disservice when he attached a certain prefix in front of coding. It made it sound like coding is easy.

No, there's nothing to vibe about coding. It's a serious skill.

I'm not an AI hater. I use it daily. I've built tools using Next.js, react etc. using Claude. But that makes me feel like a fraud everytime.

That speed that Claude creates feels not earned because I don't understand majority of what its doing.

Well, today I decided to change that feeling.

I was looking to create my personal website in WordPress. But then i thought why not create it from scratch writing every line of code by hand without any boilerplate, the old school way.

I wrote my first html page around 2009. Since few years after that I've used wordpress and haven't written any html.

I thought this is a nice oppurtunity to go back to the basics again and refresh my memory, skills and gain confidence ultimately leading to understanding the code that AI tools produce.

Its a long journey and an audacious goal for me. But life is nothing but a series of challenges and this is going to be fun!

Starting tomorrow it will be Day 0.

Have you felt that feeling of being a fake using these AI tools?

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LIVE [news/back-to-school] indexed:0 read:1min 2026-06-26 ·