We Upgrade Software Without Question. Why Don’t We Upgrade Ourselves?
Urvisha Maniar

Urvisha Maniar @notadevbuthere

About: Curious human writing about the tools and stories shaping how we build. Not a developer, just a fan of people who make cool things happen.

Joined:
Jun 17, 2025

We Upgrade Software Without Question. Why Don’t We Upgrade Ourselves?

Publish Date: Nov 26 '25
11 7

I don’t code.

But I spend my days around people who do — the late-night builders, the tab-vs-space philosophers, the “I’ll fix it in 5 minutes” liars (we all know it’s never 5 minutes :P).

And being surrounded by them taught me something no self-help book ever has:

Software updates constantly.
Humans avoid updating at all costs.

And that… makes no sense.

💻 In tech, upgrades are NORMAL. Expected. Celebrated.

If a framework updates every 3 weeks?
Cool.

If a library is deprecated?
Expected.

If you say “we’re rewriting everything”?
Tech people will complain — but they’ll do it.

If code breaks?
Fix it. Patch it. Improve it.
Nobody takes it personally.

But in life?

If you say:
“I need to change,”
suddenly it becomes:

  • scary
  • emotional
  • dramatic
  • intimidating

“what if people don’t like the new me?”

Imagine running your personal life the way tech people run their codebases:

  • iterate fast
  • admit flaws
  • patch weaknesses
  • push updates
  • remove what no longer works
  • improve what does
  • stop supporting old versions of yourself
  • build again when necessary
  • That’s growth.

🔧 Tech builders don’t fear change. They BUILD change.

This is the part that hit me the hardest.

I’ve seen developers:

throw away something they built yesterday because they found a better approach

refactor massive systems because they’re “not scalable” anymore

update dependencies without crying about the past

learn new tools without shame

proudly say “my old code was garbage” and then FIX IT

break things, improve them, break them again, eventually ship something great

No ego.
Just evolution.

Meanwhile humans cling to old versions of themselves like deprecated APIs.

Why??

⚡ People act like upgrading themselves is scary. But it’s scarier NOT to.

Staying the same forever isn’t stability.
It’s stagnation.

If code didn’t update, it would become:

  • slow
  • insecure
  • incompatible
  • outdated
  • unmaintainable
  • Sound familiar?

Humans experience the SAME THING when they refuse to grow.

You need:

  • emotional bug fixes
  • boundary patches
  • confidence updates
  • identity refactors
  • new mental frameworks
  • a better UX (how you show up)
    and sometimes…

  • a full rewrite of who you thought you were supposed to be

💡 Being around passionate techies changed how I see myself

I watched people build things out of nothing.
Fix problems nobody else noticed.
Tear down and rebuild without hesitation.
Learn constantly.
Improve relentlessly.
Experiment.
Break things on purpose just to understand them.
CARE about their craft.

And suddenly, something clicked:

If software is allowed to evolve, then so am I.

I don’t need to be perfect.
I just need to be willing to update my system.

  • Version 1.0 of me doesn’t need to work in 2025.
  • Version 2.0 doesn’t need to match 2027.
  • And one day, I’ll look back at old versions and laugh — just like devs laugh at their old commits.

This community made growth feel normal.
Expected.
Human.

🧡 My new philosophy: update yourself like you update your code

  • Fix what’s breaking.
  • Remove what drains you.
  • Add features that make you better.
  • Drop dependencies that no longer serve.
  • Document your wins.
  • Don’t fear refactors.
  • Upgrade often.
  • And don’t apologize for becoming a new version.
  • If code is allowed to change, we are too.

What’s one “upgrade” you made in your life recently?
Or one you KNOW you should make but have been avoiding?

Let’s compare release notes.
Human Edition. ❤️‍🔥

Comments 7 total

  • GnomeMan4201
    GnomeMan4201Nov 26, 2025

    One upgrade I’ve been leaning into lately is treating emotional reactions like logs instead of verdicts: something to inspect, correlate with other signals, and learn from , not something I have to defend or suppress.

    Logs aren’t “valid” or “invalid.” They’re diagnostic. They tell you what’s happening under load, what triggers what, where the bottlenecks are. Once you stop treating feelings as ground truth and start treating them as data about your current state, the whole system gets easier to reason about.

    It’s wild how much lighter life gets when you accept that you’re supposed to ship new versions of yourself ...and that the old versions weren’t “wrong,” they were just running the best code you had at the time.

    • Urvisha Maniar
      Urvisha ManiarNov 27, 2025

      This is so beautifully said. Treating emotions as logs instead of final judgments is such a powerful shift. It matches exactly how I think about “upgrading yourself” — we’re not broken, we’re just running old code that needs refactoring. Love this perspective. 🔥

  • Benjamin Nguyen
    Benjamin NguyenNov 28, 2025

    Love it! I agree with you completely. If you don't change than you will never growth for your career or your professional life.

  • CapeStart
    CapeStartNov 29, 2025

    Love this analogy. The only catch is remembering that human upgrades aren’t hotfixes you can roll back instantly. They’re more like migrations with unknown dependencies. Move slow, version control your habits, and make sure you don’t break prod while you’re refactoring yourself.

    • Urvisha Maniar
      Urvisha ManiarDec 1, 2025

      Exactly! If only life had a rollback script and sandbox mode. Until then, we’re all shipping patches to our personality in real time.

  • streamon
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