u/Ok_Establishment_110

Lately, I've been having problems with dopamine. I used to feel the excitement of creating something, but now I feel like I've lost that passion. I feel like I'm being pulled into a whirlpool. I love developing games and applications, but I think I've lost my excitement. I wrote my first program when I was 13, and I'm 27 now. Is it related to my age, or is there anyone else in a similar situation? If so, how do you cope with this? How do you balance your dopamine levels?

Lately, I've been having problems with dopamine. I used to feel the excitement of creating something, but now I feel like I've lost that passion. I feel like I'm being pulled into a whirlpool. I love developing games and applications, but I think I've lost my excitement. I wrote my first program when I was 13, and I'm 27 now. Is it related to my age, or is there anyone else in a similar situation? If so, how do you cope with this? How do you balance your dopamine levels?

Is anyone else feeling this?
I used to spend hours searching through YouTube, Google, Stack Overflow… and when I finally solved something simple like a for loop, it felt amazing.

Now I just ask AI and get the answer instantly. It’s efficient, but I kind of miss the feeling of figuring things out on my own.

Is anyone else feeling this?
I used to spend hours searching through YouTube, Google, Stack Overflow… and when I finally solved something simple like a for loop, it felt amazing.

Now I just ask AI and get the answer instantly. It’s efficient, but I kind of miss the feeling of figuring things out on my own.

Is anyone else feeling this?
I used to spend hours searching through YouTube, Google, Stack Overflow… and when I finally solved something simple like a for loop, it felt amazing.

Now I just ask AI and get the answer instantly. It’s efficient, but I kind of miss the feeling of figuring things out on my own.

Is anyone else feeling this?
I used to spend hours searching through YouTube, Google, Stack Overflow… and when I finally solved something simple like a for loop, it felt amazing.

Now I just ask AI and get the answer instantly. It’s efficient, but I kind of miss the feeling of figuring things out on my own.

In 2019, I bought Udemy courses because I was tired of only wanting to build things.

During lockdown, I went all in on teaching myself C# and Unity. Within about two years, I shipped my first commercial project and it reached roughly 10k organic downloads.

Later I worked on a startup team that didn't work out, then spent years at a company building a lot of real projects. That gave me execution reps, but it also taught me that every phase of this industry forces you to adapt again.

That was my mindset when I started using ChatGPT for coding.

What helped me most was not "using AI." It was treating AI the same way I had treated every other learning phase:

- full focus
- constant notes
- lots of iteration
- no pretending I understood things I didn't

I wrote down what worked, what broke, which prompts wasted time, and which mistakes kept repeating. That turned AI from a shortcut into a feedback loop.

The first app I built that way was a simple image-based food identifier in Expo / React Native. It wasn't a huge success, but it taught me a lot:

- Google review took about a week
- Apple review took about three months
- I lost momentum while figuring out business / payment setup issues
- the app made a little money, then a later pivot didn't work

After that my tooling kept evolving:

- ChatGPT
- Cursor with Claude 3 / 3.5
- Claude Code

Each tool changed my speed.
None of them replaced the real work.

The biggest lesson for me is that AI does not replace learning. It amplifies the learning system you already have.

If you use it to avoid thinking, you get weaker.
If you use it to iterate faster, take notes, and close your own gaps, it becomes leverage.

That has been my experience, at least.

Curious how other people here think about it:
has AI made you better at learning, or just faster at producing?

In 2019, I got serious about learning to build software.

During lockdown, I taught myself C# and Unity, and within a couple of years I had shipped a commercial project that reached around 10k organic downloads.

Later I worked on startup ideas, then spent years building real products in a company environment. When the market shifted again, I adapted again, this time by adding AI tools to my workflow.

What surprised me is that AI was most useful when I treated it like part of a learning system, not a replacement for one.

The things that helped me most were:
- staying focused on one stack at a time
- taking notes on what worked and what failed
- tracking repeated mistakes
- forcing myself to understand the parts I kept leaning on

I went from ChatGPT to Cursor with Claude, then later to Claude Code.
Each tool improved speed.
None of them replaced the need to think.
So my current view is simple:
AI doesn't teach you discipline, taste, or persistence.
But if you already care about those things, it can massively accelerate how you learn.

Curious how other people here see it:
has AI actually improved how you learn, or mostly just how fast you produce?

We all know the Pou mobile game, but it's become very saturated these days. Instead, what if there was a system where you could raise pets, like fish or cats & dogs? You would feed your pet daily, taking care of it and providing food. What kind of system do you think it should be? Also, what should be included in the game to draw you in? I would really appreciate your insights. Let's discuss this in the comments.