Engineering

From Text Editors to AI Pair Programmers

I still remember my first job writing C code with a very simple text editor back to my college time. Then I moved to vim. Later, I switched to source insight. Then VSCode, with plugins for linting, formatting, and debugging, became my daily driver.

Today I am using a powerful AI coding assistant inside my IDE, which can suggest entire functions, explain codebases, write tests, and even refactor across files. This evolution isn’t just incremental — it is structural. The unit of “programming” has changed. I even just use “TUI” (kiro-cli/opencode) to do coding with AI coding assistant. I spend less time on typing code, instead of planning and reviewing.

A Journey Through Telecom Evolution

Looking back at my 20 years in telecom software development, I’ve witnessed incredible technological transformations.

Early Days: Circuit-Switched Networks

When I started, the industry was dominated by traditional circuit-switched networks. We dealt with:

• TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) systems
• SS7 signaling protocols
• Legacy switching equipment

The Transition to Packet Networks

The shift to IP-based networks brought new challenges:

• Migration from circuit-switched to packet-switched architectures
• Implementing QoS in IP networks
• Integrating VoIP with traditional telephony

Modern Era: Cloud-Native Telecom

Today, the landscape has evolved dramatically: