After 30 years away from coding, I'm building products again thanks to AI

I'm a video game studio director managing 175+ developers. I watch code being written every day, but I haven't personally shipped anything in three decades.

Until two months ago.

The catalyst: My friend and I had an idea for an emotion tracker. I knew a bit about CSS, so I tried teaching him. But I quickly realized he needed to learn by experimenting and the traditional path was killing his momentum.

Setting up VS Code, understanding file structures, git commands, push/pull, local host servers... it was too much overhead just to see if changing padding: 10px to padding: 20px made a difference.

Even the browser inspector felt too complex for someone just trying to learn the basics.

So I built something: A CSS visual inspector where you can just play with. Adjust values, see changes instantly, learn by doing.

That's when I realized that AI had lowered the barrier enough that I could actually build the tools I needed instead of just wishing they existed.

After a week or two of building the product and deploying through Vercel, buying a URL, I needed a way to find users. I wasn't yet ready for user acquisition. This is where I found Product Hunt.

The community is awesome. My first launch didn't go as planned, but wow did I learn. Many thanks for being the community that you are.

Shoutout to @rafail_vasilakis and @zudiay who produced simple web apps that topped the charts in November. You were inspiring.

Check out what they built

https://www.producthunt.com/products/the-map-of-human-ideas?utm_source=other&utm_medium=social

and

https://www.producthunt.com/products/gta-radio-2?utm_source=other&utm_medium=social