I learned to code when I was nine years old. By some magical serendipity, my dad had just brought home an Apple //c computer and my mom had decided to take a programming class at a local community center. She never learned to code. She did, however, leave a thick block of dot-matrix printouts sitting next to a computer whose only use up until that point was playing Lemonade Stand.
(Years later, in another case of magical serendipity, I ended up working for J Allard — creator of that Lemonade Stand game and head of the initiative to launch the first Xbox.)
So other than justifying my gray hair, what’s my point? Though I never ended up writing code professionally, my technical experience has always been helpful as a product builder. It helped me bridge two worlds.
Today, like so many others, I’ve been experiencing a newfound joy in making software. For the first time, AI coding tools enable anyo…