--- title: I Became a Developer Again Without Meaning To | daily.dev description: A former developer returns to coding after 15+ years to build a gender diversity tracker for Substack's Technology leaderboards. The journey involves learning... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/i-became-a-developer-again-without-meaning-to-fbnl2oypk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: I Became a Developer Again Without Meaning To | daily.dev og:description: A former developer returns to coding after 15+ years to build a gender diversity tracker for Substack's Technology leaderboards. The journey involves learning... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/i-became-a-developer-again-without-meaning-to-fbnl2oypk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/fBNL2oypk.png og:image:alt: I Became a Developer Again Without Meaning To og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # I Became a Developer Again Without Meaning To **[Code Like A Girl](https://daily.dev/sources/colkgirl)** · 9 min read · 49 upvotes · 2 comments ## Summary A former developer returns to coding after 15+ years to build a gender diversity tracker for Substack's Technology leaderboards. The journey involves learning modern tools (VS Code, GitHub, Chrome extensions) with AI assistance (ChatGPT, Copilot), pivoting from UI scraping to API calls, and ultimately settling on a Python/SQLite/Streamlit stack. The project highlights both the challenges of being a beginner again and the accessibility of building with AI as a co-pilot. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@danielolamide** · 0 upvotes > was programming ever simple **@a\_meb\_a** · 0 upvotes > well, coding turned basic knowledge ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [My AI learning journey](https://daily.dev/posts/my-ai-learning-journey-i6xkd16r0) · Agile Testing · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [How AI Is Transforming the Role of Software Developers](https://daily.dev/posts/how-ai-is-transforming-the-role-of-software-developers-dbpnwhekr) · C\# Corner · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Unbearable Lightness of Coding](https://daily.dev/posts/the-unbearable-lightness-of-coding-vlnmxgw0d) · Towards Data Science · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Web development is fun again](https://daily.dev/posts/web-development-is-fun-again-t68ksqpw7) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#chatgpt](https://daily.dev/tags/chatgpt), [#devtools](https://daily.dev/tags/devtools), [#github](https://daily.dev/tags/github), [#python](https://daily.dev/tags/python) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/i-became-a-developer-again-without-meaning-to-fbnl2oypk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"I Became a Developer Again Without Meaning To","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-became-a-developer-again-without-meaning-to-fbnl2oypk","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-became-a-developer-again-without-meaning-to-fbnl2oypk"},"datePublished":"2026-02-05T07:48:41.703Z","dateModified":"2026-03-15T03:27:40.370Z","description":"A former developer returns to coding after 15+ years to build a gender diversity tracker for Substack's Technology leaderboards. 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