The Art of Building Software will never Die

The art of building is such an important curiosity to have.

I fully embrace AI—I use it every day to write and ship software faster. It’s incredible, and I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t changed the way I work.

But I can’t let go of my curiosity to understand the smallest moving parts. I can’t stop tinkering, breaking things down, and building my side projects brick by brick. That urge to build for the sake of building is something I’m deeply grateful for.

Recently, I’ve been diving into microservices and APIs. Somewhere along the way, a simple question started haunting me: how is my code even reachable on my local machine? Sure, I know the surface-level stuff—HTTP calls, GET requests, JSON responses, the satisfying 200 OK. But what even is the HTTP server that makes this all possible? Why had I never broken it down, piece by piece, and seen it for myself?

So, I decided to write my own HTTP server—not because I need to, but because I want to see. I want to understand. I want to become.

It’s 6:36 AM. A loud truck woke me up, and I caught the sunrise. Instead of rolling back to sleep, I felt this unstoppable urge to tell you how excited I am—because today, I’m going to learn to create my own HTTP server. And yes, I’m typing this from my bathroom because I simply couldn’t wait.

Damn! Free will is an amazing thing.

And that’s the heart of it: the art of building can never die. It shouldn’t. No matter how powerful our tools get, no matter how efficient AI becomes, there’s something primal about making things ourselves.

Writing code and learning computer science can feel almost... spiritual. Sometimes, when I’m building, I hear Tool’s 46 & 2 looping in my head:

“Listen to my muscle memory

Contemplate what I have been clinging to.”

That’s what it feels like—muscle memory, curiosity, and the joy of creation blending into something deeper.

So yes—use the tools. Use AI. Get smarter, build faster, build cleaner. But don’t stop building. Don’t stop experimenting. Don’t stop following your curiosity down strange rabbit holes.

"There’s a perfect recording of Stairway to Heaven on vinyl or Spotify, and you can play it a hundred times—it will always sound solid. But it will never replace the joy of picking up a guitar and playing it with your own hands."

-some guy on the internet

That’s the joy of building. That’s why it will never die.