Back to Writing, Thanks to AI

The progress of AI keeps surprising me, even when I expect it to work. This blog was built in 2018 when I was experimenting with Jekyll and Hugo late at night, mostly to see if I could get something working.

Since then I tried several times to bring it back, but the system (dependencies) was outdated and would not compile. I got busy, left it aside, and never returned to it. Every now and then I thought about fixing it. Even when a colleague helped, we could not get it running.

Yesterday I finally decided to give it another try, this time with a bit more confidence that AI could handle it. Using GPT-5 inside Cursor, the blog was up and running in less than fifteen minutes. Webpack, Node, Netlify were updated and templates were all fixed.

After that I spent some time making small changes to styles, updating the template, adding new content and adjusting a bit of code. The bookshelf section was also outdated, but I had a CSV with all the books in my personal library. I uploaded it, asked GPT-5 to read it, and it wrote scripts that parsed the file and generated individual entries for every book.

Seeing my entire library appear instantly on the site was oddly satisfying. I had been holding onto that CSV for years thinking one day I would get around to it. Without AI it would have taken me a full day, maybe more.

What this shows me is that with enough context and clear instructions, AI does solve the problem. If the ask is vague, it struggles. But if you can describe the steps, the system can execute. If I had tried doing this myself, I know I would have wasted hours googling errors and maybe even given up again. Outsourcing it would have cost money and time. Instead, with Cursor and GPT-5, I could do it quickly and without frustration.

It makes me bullish about how software will be developed in the future. The way we build is going to look very different in the next five years, and it is important for developers to learn how to work with AI. These tools are about helping you execute and making your work more efficient.