From Builder to Systems Thinker

When I first started working as a developer, my only goal was to make things work. I loved solving problems fast, shipping features, and getting that instant feedback loop of seeing something live. The dopamine hit of 'it works' is powerful, especially when you're not the one who has to maintain it later. It felt good to move quickly and prove I could handle anything thrown at me.

Over time, that mindset started to feel limiting.

What changed

At some point, I stopped thinking about individual problems and started thinking about systems. Not just how to solve today's issue, but how to design solutions that hold up over time.

Code became about trade-offs, maintainability, and understanding how decisions compound over the life of a project.

Different questions

I started asking different questions. Instead of "How do I solve this?", I asked "What happens if this scales?" or "How does this decision affect future work?"

I stopped optimising for speed and started optimising for clarity. The best solutions aren't always the fastest ones. They're the ones that make sense six months later when you've forgotten why you built them that way.

How it shapes my work now

Systems-level thinking is how I approach everything now. I design with long-term intent, think in trade-offs, and build for maintainability over short-term wins.

It's slower at first, but it makes everything else easier. Try explaining that to someone asking why the feature isn't done yet.