I Learned C++ Before ChatGPT

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:21:45 -0600

Here’s something that my particular generation who finished University before the end of 2021 (those born up to 1999,) really have over the younger zoomers: we graduated “Pre-GPT”. I was part of the last few cohorts to finish University before the rise of LLMs,¹ and therefore one of the final cohorts to complete University on hard mode with no assistance. OpenAI’s text-davinci-002, the first rumble of things to come, wouldn’t appear until March the year after my graduation.

University on Ryan Fleck

I Learned C++ Before ChatGPT