Building a Website with AI: What I Learned

I built a website with AI over the weekend. Not because I needed to, but because I was curious. I'd been meaning to start blogging for a while, and this seemed like the perfect test case. Having dabbled in HTML and CSS years ago in university, I wasn't starting completely blind. But I was rusty enough that this felt like a genuine test of current AI capabilities.

The most surprising thing I discovered is that you shouldn't rely entirely on AI. The fundamentals—setting up your environment, understanding basic workflows—are still best learned through traditional sources like Stack Overflow and YouTube tutorials. AI starts fumbling when you throw raw English at it without understanding the technical foundation yourself.

Cursor AI turned out to be the game-changer. Unlike using ChatGPT or Claude in isolation, Cursor integrates AI directly into your development environment. This tight integration makes all the difference.

The key to working with AI is to keep your requests atomic. Large, vague prompts lead to confused, bloated code. Think of it like ordering from a master chef who can cook anything, but needs exact ingredients and measurements to create the dish you want. The more precise your technical vocabulary, the better the output.

What's particularly interesting is how this process teaches you to code. As you work with AI in small increments, you start recognizing patterns. Eventually, you find yourself making changes directly instead of asking AI, because you've absorbed the underlying logic.

This brings me to perhaps the most important point: maintain control of your codebase. Let it grow gradually, like a bonsai tree. Every time you let AI add a complex feature without understanding it, you're accumulating technical debt that will come back to haunt you.

In the end, I'm glad I took the plunge. It's been a great learning experience, and I've already started writing my first post. I'm not sure how long it will take me to get back into the swing of things, but I'm excited to see where this journey takes me.

- Mike