Andrew Davison is a self-taught developer who is using AI to advance his coding knowledge. He's already sold an app he made with Python and deployed on Replit. Now he's worked on a newsletter, Replit Builders, to share his knowledge.
Before I share Andrew's story, I'd like to thank Nulab for sponsoring this edition!
Looking for a Jira alternative your team will actually enjoy?
Backlog is a project management tool built for teams who want structure—without the overwhelm. If Jira feels heavy or complex, Backlog offers a cleaner, more intuitive experience with all the essentials: kanban boards, Gantt charts, issues, sprints, docs, version control, and more.
Thousands of teams switch to Backlog to simplify workflows, reduce tool fatigue, and improve visibility across engineering and product.
If you want a Jira alternative that’s fast, friendly, and frustration-free, Backlog might be the upgrade your team’s been waiting for.
Try Backlog as your Jira alternative →
Hey, so can you introduce yourself Andrew?
I’m Andrew. I grew up in the UK, but I’ve lived in Hungary for the last 11 years. I ended up here unplanned after some time backpacking around Asia and Europe - I just didn’t want to go home!
I’m an indie hacker, constantly imagining, testing, growing and occasionally scrapping new business ideas. My main source of income is working as an automation expert, helping companies build stuff in Zapier to automate their workflows.
Why did you learn to code?
Back in 2010, I dropped out of a Computer Science degree. I wanted to enjoy it and thrive - but unfortunately, I just couldn’t get the hang of actually coding. The syntax, the infrastructure and all the pretty technical requirements to get something working - it was beyond me and I grew frustrated.
From there I drifted into a ‘career’ in London, first interning at a design agency, then doing sales - first for a media company and then a company that built Facebook apps for brand marketing - where I got a little exposure to code again (allbeit only selling it!).
After travelling and settling in Hungary I discovered Zapier and started using it to automate a small teaching business I was trying to build. I quickly got good at it and pivoted into an automation consulting business which quickly thrived. There was plenty of demand from businesses but very few people offering it as a service.
That ticked along, but in the back of my mind, I was always frustrated that I never mastered coding. A few times I dipped into some tutorials, but every time I would hit a wall pretty quick and leave it.
Then ChatGPT arrived…
How did you learn coding?
I’m a ‘learn by doing’ type, and I tend to learn a skill quickly if there’s something immediate I need to do with it. So when ChatGPT took off and I found out it could code - I knew it was time. I thought of something useful I needed - in this case, an app to download all my Airtable bases as CSV files in one go - and asked ChatGPT how to do this.
It recommended Replit as my coding IDE and to use Python and Flask. It then started giving me code which I copied by hand over to Replit. I’d test it, get errors, paste them back to ChatGPT, get new code… rinse and repeat. It must have taken a good 15 hours, but I finally got an app that worked (and I even went on to sell it for a small amount of money a few months later).
Anyway, doing it this way I’ll admit I didn’t really understand any of the code it gave me - but I got curious. So I started asking ChatGPT to explain bits to me and it sort of made sense. After a couple of hours of that, I could tell in a very pseudo-code way what was happening in my app.
Then I stepped back. I downloaded a few daily coding practice apps for my iPhone and started going through those - learning the basics, objects, loops, variables, logic, functions, methods etc. Alongside that - still assisted by ChatGPT - I started to build myself other small apps in Replit.
At this point, I’d call myself a novice coder. But now when I see the code ChatGPT creates for me it makes sense and I can make adjustments and fixes to it without need AI all the time.
How should people learn to code in the AI era?
Exactly the way I did! AI tools are amazing at coding, so I think for many people, other than learning the basics, it’s not required to go too deep with learning code. Instead, leverage these tools to code for you and learn by exposure to the code they create - having AI explain things to you and even ask it to ask you questions about the code to test your knowledge.
Build stuff that’s useful for you, or interests you. Look around at the things you do manually every day and automate them using code. You’ll find this approach to be quite addictive, with an immediate benefit that makes you want to keep building.
If you’re already using a tool like Zapier look at some of your workflows and try and rebuild them with code - this will also give you exposure to working with APIs which is another key skill.
