# There is no substitute to experience.. 

By [Ram](https://paragraph.com/@ram008) · 2023-08-06

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Or is there? I was included as part of a celebration for the 30th birthday of a product. The original founders were there to celebrate and it was a special occasion. I am a history, tradition, heritage, and culture buff. For me, celebrating a 30th anniversary of a product was a first-time phenomenon.

> **_“There is no substitute to experience.”_**

That was the quote I used at the celebration. Experience that is gained over the years is not something that can be shortened by someone starting new. Granted, it depends on what the newbie tries to catch up on. But for most things, there is just no equivalent to showing up, putting in the time and getting better. There are professional trainers that can give you some short cuts and useful tips and over time these trainers, which are sometimes search engines will be replaced by AI.

AI can help you get a head start, avoid making the mistakes others did by giving you heads up, doing the leg work for you, making it easier to code and test. That will however be a luxury available to everyone that can pay for it, thus the playing field is levelled. Then it gets to who is able to provide the right inputs to the models and that needs experience, so yet again, if you draw this out, experience is going to rule. Experience using models, giving it the right inputs, providing the right context or whatever. So, perhaps it is a different application of experience, but at the core of it, you need to show up, do your time, get better.

Tools will help, and a spanner is a spanner to anyone that wields one. You can buy a better spanner, but you get better at using it by using it more, not by asking AI or another tool how to use that first tool. Tools will bring up a new normal, how quickly we show up in that new world and how often will build our experience there.

Back to the celebration. The once mighty Goliath is now a David. However that David who had experience as a Goliath, should stop behaving like one. He needs to go back to the basics and behave like an underdog, move fast, innovate and do the very things he did when he got started. No one starts out in business being Goliath. They earn that position and have the option of thumping their fists on their accomplishment or take on larger Goliath and keep moving.

Constantly reinnovating, getting pulse of the parameters, showing up and learning is what it takes to keep fresh, keep up the fight be the David that takes on bigger and bigger Goliaths.

Happy 30th!! Hope to see you younger when you are 40 and then 50!

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*Originally published on [Ram](https://paragraph.com/@ram008/there-is-no-substitute-to-experience)*