Systems Engineer: Write Code Yourself in the AI Era to Build Ownership and Taste
Abhishekcur · x · 2026-11-09
Answering whether to spend weeks hand-writing a 2000-line project or offload it all to AI, an infrastructure freelancer/OSS contributor says do both but write code yourself as much as possible.
- Writing C++/Rust/Go/Zig by hand teaches not just good code but why you write it that way, building ownership and taste.
- Keep reading the standard resources, but minimize AI-generated code while learning.
- Example: building a Redis-like DB starts with writing your own spec — functional and non-functional requirements — and analyzing workloads, like a real systems engineer.
Related event: Veteran Engineers: Write Code Yourself in the AI Era(2 posts)→
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