The Bored Kid Who Wanted a Robot

What happens when you realise you've been thinking one-dimensionally

I was maybe ten years old, home alone every afternoon while my parents worked. My sisters were never around. Just me, the apartment, and hours of nothing to do. The kind of boredom that would probably get my parents reported today.

I used to fantasise about having a little robot. Someone, something, to talk to. To play with. A delusional poor kid with too much time, too much imagination, and not that many toys .

I forgot about that kid for a long time.

Twenty Years of Pixels

I’ve been a designer for two decades now. I’m ok at it. I love it. Some nights I’ll open Figma for no reason at all, just to move things around, just because it feels right.

But lately there’s been this itch I can’t scratch. Not dissatisfaction exactly. More like I’ve been operating in the same mental room for too long and I need to kick down a wall.

This wall has been pressing me hard.

And then there’s the other thing. The thing designers whisper about but don’t always say clearly: What happens to us when AI gets really, really good?

Learning to Think in a Different Language

So I started learning Python and JavaScript.

Weekends. Late nights. Stealing hours wherever I can find them. Not because I want to become a software engineer (I don’t). But because I believe the real divide in the future won’t be between people who use AI and people who don’t. It’ll be between people who understand how it works and people who just push buttons and type words.

Python is the backbone of AI. JavaScript is how the web thinks. Learning them isn’t about writing production code (though that’s a nice side effect for launching MVPs). It’s about literacy. About being able to look under the hood and actually see what’s happening.

I’ve built some basic workflows on Replit. Nothing impressive. But enough to realise something important - design is about to get a lot more intelligent. Not just taste and aesthetics (though those still matter) but systems thinking. Logic. Understanding how things actually connect and operate.

And taste itself? I think it’s more trainable than many admit, especially with the right models. What’s left after that is pure subjectivity: what moves you versus what moves me. And that’s where the interesting work lives.

Hitting My Head Against the Wall (Again)

It’s frustrating as hell.

Some days I feel like I’m back to being that kid trying to figure out how to make a perfect gradient in Photoshop. One minute something clicks and I think “Oh, I get it now.” The next minute I’m staring at error messages wondering if I’ll ever make anything actually useful.

But here’s the thing: it’s also fun. It gives me something to chase. Something to look forward to.

And I’m starting to recognise that bored kid again. The one who dreamed about a robot friend because he had nothing else. The one who imagined impossible things just because he could.

The Boring Safety of Adulthood

Somewhere along the way, we all became too careful. Too predictable. Too obsessed with making the “right” choices - the ones that look good on paper, the ones society told us make sense.

We optimised for safety and lost the plot.

I’m not saying quit your job and learn Haskell. But I am saying remember who you were before you learned to colour inside the lines. What were you obsessed with? What did you daydream about when no one was watching?

For me, it’s that kid who wanted to build a robot to talk to. Turns out, twenty years later, I’m finally trying to learn how to build some real shit, not only design it.

Love.

Stef