I'm sorry, Stack Overflow. AI made me forget you existed.

Eleven years of Java, three eras of tooling, and one developer's completely honest reckoning with what we gained -- and quietly lost. Chapter 1: Kevin saved my life in 2009. He just didn't know it. I am a fresh Java developer, twenty-something, deeply overconfident, and staring at a BeanCreationException that makes absolutely no sense to me. I do what every developer from my generation did. Copy the error. Paste into Google. Land on Stack Overflow. The answer is right there -- third result, g...