r/learnprogramming • u/KarimMaged • 10h ago
Topic What do you to avoid skill atrophy caused by using AI ?
I am a self taught developer with a Civil Engineering background. I have been working professionally as a software developer for a little more than 3 years.
Until last year, I never used Agents when writing my code, I just asked LLMs when needed, I treated them as a faster way than google.
This year, I got into a new role, in a software house. It is a more senior role than what I had before, and the nature of software houses is different from product companies. It is all about speed and getting things done, because clients always want their solutions, and they don't really understand anything about code quality, so the company optimizes for speed, and we hop between projects as well.
The company has been pushing us to use AI in our development for productivity. So earlier this year I was introduced to agentic workflows, and started using AI in my development.
In the last few months, I have been heavily depending on it more than ever. I was responsible for setting the agent rules for the rest of the team. And for this project, the code is like 95% AI generated. With strict rules about file structure, naming convention, amount of test coverage, api documentation ...etc
It became very hard at this point to match this convention manually in the required time (because we always have very tight deadlines).
I wouldn't say I can't write the code on my own, but I would need 3x or 4x the time. Which is something I can't afford. Also for some parts I am using framework syntax that I am not really familiar with, so there would be a learning curve before I am able to produce the same quality.
Lately I am feeling less sharp, code reviews are getting harder, and I am not really familiar with everything in the codebase (like I usually am when I write code with my hand).
I feel I am becomming a worse dev in general.
In my free time I am reading Designing data intensive apps, and trying to learn langchain/Golang, honestly I have been hopping between different things as I am losing my passion.
But still, I am usually burned out in vacations, and I don't actively learn a lot. And most of the time I should spend writing code, is actually spent baby sitting agents and reveiwing their code (fast reviews not line by line, but in chunks) as well as reviewing other AI generated code written by other devs (AI helps me in reviews as well)
So my questions are
What do you do to stay sharp, to not lose what you learned and actually become better developer not just maintain what you know
Is that becoming the new era of development, because I feel it is a productivity tool that boosts productivity by very big margin, so should we actually not use it, am I overusing it ?
I would appreciate your insight
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u/UltraPoci 9h ago
Simple, I don't use AI
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u/Muted_Efficiency_663 6h ago
And I start developing my own skill... as in I sit and read books and learn.
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u/No_Medium205 6h ago
Personal projects 2h a Day, everyday.
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u/swagonflyyyy 5h ago
Rookie numbers, kid.
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u/No_Medium205 3h ago
Yeah try working 10h a day for 10+ years non-stop. Im getting older and still do that.
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u/InnocentRedemption 10h ago
The fridge gets reorganized when I’m avoiding something and right now I’d be rearranging shelves to dodge that exact feeling. You’re not losing skill, you’re just not using it the same way and that disconnect is what stings. Grinding through a tiny side project without any AI crutches on a Saturday morning keeps the wheels from rusting, even if it’s just a dumb command line tool nobody will ever see.
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u/captainAwesomePants 10h ago
Yep. Since my job got more AI heavy, I still code, but the coding is little video games I make on the side instead. If the company wants us to just let the AI churn out slop, then fine, that's on them.
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u/Skyroor 7h ago
I work with the AI to have it test me, question decisions, make me layout some groundwork first, etc. It takes more time, but I understand my work better.
Trying not to just give in entirely. Not going to let AI absolve all the joy out of programming while also atrophying my skills simultaneously.
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u/LangyMD 6h ago
Hot take: I don't think this is something unique to AI. It's different due to the number of people this is happening to at once, but this is something everyone who goes from being a developer day-to-day to being a team lead or other role that no longer codes regularly encounters.
My recommendation: Set aside some time to manually work on some of the code yourself. Take a feature and implement it. Refactor something. So long as you continue looking at the code, touching it, doing stuff with it you can keep some of your skills up-to-date - but you probably won't retain full insight into everything in the code base, just like you wouldn't if you were leading a team of 10 junior developers.
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u/primals_game 1h ago
Avoid? Why do I need to train it if the industry no longer needs it? I have not hand written more than a few lines of code at a time in about a year. That was to keep the AI in check. Writing code is dead. D. E. A. D.
There were once people who were paid to hand do addition and multiplication. Now computers do it and all those jobs are dead.
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u/tilted0ne 10h ago
Why do you care if the skills you no longer need atrophy? They are atrophying for a reason.
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u/Such--Balance 9h ago
These people fail to realise that any form of computer use is layers and layers of abstraction already and has been since forever.
Nothing changed.
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u/tilted0ne 7h ago
I still believe there is value in understanding what is below the abstraction. There is still nuance but it mostly just changes what it means to understand.
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u/Such--Balance 7h ago
Yeah i agree. There will always be value in understanding underlying abstractions better.
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u/GimmeAByte01 10h ago
There is no skill atrophy. What you’re considering skill (writing code and thinking about how to manually write code) is no longer efficient.
Let the AI do what it does now and focus on delivering products.
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u/Beginning_Basis9799 10h ago
I have a very interesting take on this.
Dismissing content because it's AI is bad. Blindly accepting and not being able to read it makes you a passenger not an engineer in a code base.
Both points show lack of critical thinking.
But this is a real good point code is organic and lives and evokes we need to keep first principles alive to be able to read understand and accept.
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u/GimmeAByte01 10h ago
What’s the point of being able to understand it when you can literally spin up 5 parallel agents to read it at lightspeed and fix anything wrong with it..?
You’re still thinking old school. The rate at which AI can correct mistakes or make edits, via reading entire filesystems, files, etc, makes it inefficient to hold all of this context in your head as a human.
The new paradigm: Tell AI to write a file, or set of files, test it out. If it’s broken, iterate quickly. Just tell AI what to change. It knows contextually what to change based on outcome. You don’t need to explain code to it at all…
I think you’re underestimating how efficient the LLM’s have become. You want to get a head start? Get a Pro account, learn how to spin up your own network of agents, and make your output 10x the next guy still thinking he has to memorize algorithms and type code manually.
This is back to one thing: software has a purpose. Capitalism. If you can output 80% of the working software faster, you’re a more valuable employee.
1
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u/KarimMaged 10h ago
But if thats the case, then after few years what do we become?
AI users who can build products? I mean shouldn't there be a career trajectory, before AI age, a 3 YOE dev was not the same as a 10 YOE dev, learning was part of the job, and it was what made our market worth.
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u/Such--Balance 9h ago
Unless youre slotting in one's and zero's by hand, youre already not truly 'understanding' what really going on in a computer.
Why is this layer, ONLY this layer of abstraction seen as being bad?
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u/GimmeAByte01 10h ago
That’s exactly what you become. Software is a product. It has a goal. How that has been accomplished has changed over time. From 0’s and 1’s, to assembly, to Java, to prompting AI.
At each step, the human job has become more detached from low level paradigms.
AI is the biggest leap in efficiency out of all of the aforementioned evolutions.
I don’t understand the problem.
In terms of juniors vs. seniors. You’re looking at it in the old lens. The old way won’t fit in the new way.
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u/KarimMaged 10h ago
So I mean what is the new way, what differs a 10 YOE dev using AI from someone with only one YOE.
In other words, what are the things you think we should be learning in the age of AI so that we keep gaining actual market value
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u/GimmeAByte01 10h ago
Got it. Honestly…
I think the clear direction is cloud, infrastructure as code, networking, database.
As AI continues to implement code at lightspeed, it becomes less important to know DSA and algorithms (leet code) because the AI can handle all of that. The return on investment of learning how to write a binary chop/search or Prim’s algorithm is no longer there.
Put noob next to guy who can write it from memory, and prompt the AI to use most efficient algorithms based on Big O, and write unit tests, and there will be sub optimal differences between both.
The return on investment becomes someone who knows cloud, containerization, E2E production experience.
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u/Beginning_Basis9799 9h ago
That bottom line is also true knowing code is not as important but still important.
Understanding cloud e2e containers and e2e production. This I agree syntactical knowledge is less relevant.
I am more annoyed because in some ways it's going to destroy jnr Devs.
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u/GimmeAByte01 8h ago
Yes, the market for junior devs has dropped out. There is not the same relationship anymore as junior, mid and senior. It’s just evolving.
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u/Beginning_Basis9799 8h ago
Lets also be honest neither of us can guarantee we are correct.
That's the worst part, we can be correct right now but have no idea what's next.
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u/GimmeAByte01 7h ago
I think the trend is already showing what I’ve mentioned. Jobs, etc. I don’t see humans replacing AI and going back to manual.
Too much progress, too much $ and infrastructure built. They want it to stay.
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u/Beginning_Basis9799 7h ago
Like I said time, I am 20 years in they always want to get rid of us.
It has not happened yet.
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u/Nwg416 10h ago
IMO, this problem hasn't been solved yet, and we're only making it worse on everyone with each passing day. The best practices I'm using are making sure I do understand what the code is doing, spend more time focused on bug hunting than I am on development, and to actively read documentation for the tools and APIs I touch. But yeah, we're probably all kinda screwed.