At 48, a Truck Driver Pulled Several All-Nighters and Used AI to Build an Overseas Tool Site

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Narrated by: Lao Huang, a truck driver

01 "The President of Yugoslavia" Decided to Switch Tracks

"This year I turned 48, my zodiac year. At an age when I hadn't seriously touched a computer in over ten years, the explosion of DeepSeek during the 2025 Spring Festival hit me like a muffled thunderclap."

Lao Huang grew up in Jiaozuo, a fourth-tier city. He was part of a factory family, and because of a childhood nickname, people sometimes jokingly called him "the President of Yugoslavia." These days, everyone simply calls him Lao Huang.

He works as a cargo transporter for vending machines. DeepSeek's sudden rise made him realize something: "The train of this era is about to leave the station. Whether you're drinking coffee in an office tower or chewing on a steamed bun inside a truck cab, the AI wave is going to hit you. If you don't catch up head-on, you'll be left behind in the dust."

So this complete outsider decided to learn seriously. He wanted to find out whether "hands that used to only drive trucks could also knock on the door of AI programming."

02 From Handcraft to the Art of Directing

During the first two weeks of learning, Lao Huang kept doubting himself. "I don't even know what code is supposed to look like. Can I really do this?"

But the words from teachers and teaching assistants gave him confidence: in the age of AI programming, you are no longer just a manual laborer moving code brick by brick. You are the director. Building software is no longer about stacking every piece by hand. If you can explain clearly what you want, AI can help you build it step by step.

That was how Lao Huang entered vibe coding.

• "Help me make a Snake game. Make it look nice and add a start button!"
• "Generate a dynamic map that shows cargo shipping from China to destinations around the world in a cool way!"

And just like that, the apps appeared. The feeling was so strange and powerful that it deeply shocked him. Programming changed from a dry form of manual craft into a kind of commanding art. The hands that had held a steering wheel for half a lifetime could now also take hold of the steering wheel of the digital world.

03 Through Breakdowns and Persistence, He Forced a Full Business Loop to Work

"Talking is cheap. Real combat is what matters."

The fifth assignment in the course was to complete a substantial independent project. Lao Huang decided to build an overseas AI tool site. It had to work, it had to be deployable, and it had to take payments. Ideally, it would form a complete business loop.

At first, reproducing the website prototype went fairly smoothly. But the moment he moved to the core feature, image generation, errors started exploding everywhere. As a complete beginner, he could only debug by talking to AI while filling in gaps in his own foundational knowledge. For four or five days straight, he drove and delivered goods during the day, then came home at night and went into round after round of battle with AI: asking, debugging, learning, repeating. At his lowest point, he sat in front of the screen all night staring at F12 developer tools.

He considered giving up more than once. But the active Q&A in the learning group and the professional knowledge-sharing sessions kept pulling him back in. Later, he started using the free large model inside the domestic coding tool Trae. Errors decreased, communication became smoother, and Lao Huang pushed forward in one go, integrating text-to-image, text-to-video, and old photo restoration.

The hardest part, though, was not the core AI function. It was setting up a domain email, configuring Google login, and connecting the payment systems, PayPal and Creem. Lao Huang read the official docs, asked AI questions, and handled the design and configuration himself. In the end, he completed the payment integration from 0 to 1 on his own.

He said that when Nano Banana finally ran end to end, he wanted to shout: "Designing and shipping a website with a real working business loop is no longer something only programmers at big companies can do!"

04 Lao Huang's Rules for Building from Zero

After a long journey of trial, error, and persistence, Lao Huang summed up several lessons he paid for the hard way:

• The building-block rule: do not try to swallow everything at once. Change one small feature at a time, and move on only after that part works.
• Learn to give examples: when talking to AI, do not stay abstract. Show it concrete examples, error messages, and the effect you want.
• Learn by borrowing: do not just copy and paste. Try to understand why AI wrote it that way.
• Adjust your mindset: do not panic when errors appear. They are teaching you where the pitfalls are.

05 This Train of the Times Has Room for Everyone

Now Lao Huang is still the same truck driver hauling goods around Zhengzhou. But unlike before, he now has a second identity: AI application developer. More recently, he even built a mini program for his company called Su Bianli Campus Snack Shop, which greatly improved the shopping experience for teachers and students.

As Lao Huang put it: "As long as you have the urge to solve a problem, code is no longer the barrier."

His message to others is refreshingly direct:

Friends, don't be afraid. If you want to begin, it's never too late.
The steering wheel is in your own hands.