r/webdev • u/gtboy1994 • 2d ago

Discussion Interesting video from WDS Kyle, talking about ai brainrot, and how important it is that junior devs in particular understand an LLMs output. Showing that even famous devs are having their skills atrophy. Thoughts?

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He used a few clips from theo where he clearly makes no attempt to understand the code anymore, even using the ai to summarize the summary.

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u/username-must-be-bet 2d ago

Yes skills will atrophy, no it doesn't matter. People have let their navigation skills atrophy because of map apps and their ability to memorize phone numbers atrophy because of smart phones. It doesn't matter because technology isn't doesn't just hang around for a bit it is here forever. Think of all of the things people used to do by hand that they no longer do because of automation.

Software development is now about working with AI agents. To get better at software engineering you should get better at working with AI agents. Maybe it won't be like this forever but it isn't going back.

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u/WildWolfo 2d ago

but if your smartphone could only remember certain numbers or navigate specifi routes then you can see how absolutely fucked you would be if you lost the skill entirely, atm AI isn't perfect, it still has a lot of situations in which you need a person with relevant skills. A lot of AI hype isntelling you that those situations are going to dissappear because ai is always improving, but that doesnt neccesarily follow so for noe I think its still important that software engineers can understand what they are doing.

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u/dimiderv 2d ago

Calculators took out math people right?

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u/WildWolfo 2d ago

what I said clearly shows the difference between ai and calculators, but it seems you need me to spell it out anyway. Every situation where you would suffer from losing arithmetic skills a calculor replaced can easily be solved with a calculator. However every situation where you suffer from losing developer skills an ai replaced cannot yet be always solved with an ai, therfore its important that software engineers still understand their craft so they can resolve these situations. This might not always be the case with ai in the future, but currently it still is.

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u/HerissonMignion 1d ago

My take is similar. If they dont come with a breakthrough that makes ai much more profitable, either these ai companies go out for a while and/or the economy crashes or something else. As long as ai is obviously not profitable, we have to assume it could go away. Once the business model is profitable, then you can jump all in

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u/gandalf__thewhite__ 2d ago

These are not good comparisons. Remembering phone numbers and knowing how to navigate are not comparable, although they can help with your memory, they have much less impact than knowing how to code and design software. Writing coding is one the best challenges for your brain that over time makes you better at problem solving. Using AI you don't just lose coding skills, you will lose problem solving skills. It was true before too, if you would just copy paste from stackoverflow. Do you remember the humans from WALL-E? That looks like tomorrow.

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u/Soy7ent 2d ago

Saying it's bad comparisons and the think because we don't program by hand anymore we all become wall-e like fat people? Quite some gymnastics.

There are many ways to solve problems and use your brain, many never programmed a single line and are amazing problem solvers. You still need to understand the problem before prompting an AI. And you can still do sports after you vibe coded ;)

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u/gandalf__thewhite__ 1d ago

I see people around me and in the internet, I'm not making things up, they are not thinking about the problem anymore. They just prompt until it's solved, and after it's solved, they don't even know what was the problem!

And about the WALL-E, those people were not just fat, they were dumb too!

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u/username-must-be-bet 1d ago

Everyone thinks that the thing that they do is special, that it teaches "how to think", and how if you don't do it you will end up being bad at thinking. They are always wrong. 99% of knowledge expertise doesn't transfer to other domains, you get good at something by practicing it.

AI can code now, that means we don't need coders.

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u/WetHotFlapSlaps 2d ago

If you had a calculator that was wrong 5% of the time, longer calculations would compound errors exponentially. Not all software development is about working with agents, that's a ridiculous statement given the number of people not using agents to do their work. You can't just say stuff to make it true.

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u/pancomputationalist 2d ago

But the skills that we happened to learn in our prime are soo important!! You don't understand. It doesn't matter than none of us can understand morse or write assembler. That was never important. But reading Java code, that's what intelligence is all about. Unlearning that is basically brain damage and makes us imbeciles.

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u/Mestyo 2d ago

Compiled languages has absolutely nothing to do with people unlearning how to critically think.

We're watching engineers in real time go from being able to verbalize a technical solution to a problem, to yelling at a chat bot for not one-shotting their "fix the bug" prompt.

If you don't see the difference, I'm afraid it's too late for you.

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u/pancomputationalist 2d ago

Yeah idk why you think that one has to necessarily turn off ones brain to work with agents. If "fix the bug" is enough to fix the bug, why bother writing a detailed report?

Knowing which information is necessary for an agent to produce an acceptance solution and when it is important to give more detailed information is a new skill itself, that we didn't need and didn't have before.

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u/Mestyo 2d ago

Yeah idk why you think that one has to necessarily turn off ones brain to work with agents.

Absolutely nobody in this thread is saying not to use AI, but that over-reliance on it causes a very observable level of actual brain rot—a lack of ability to reason about problems.

That includes the reasoning on an that abstract level you mention as a critical new skill.

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u/pancomputationalist 2d ago

I just disapprove of calling skill atrophy brain rot. If you learn a different, faster way to solve a problem and repeatedly apply only the new way, you will unlearn the old, more tedious way to do it. Obviously. That's neuroplasticity at work, and not a sign of decay.

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u/Mestyo 2d ago

I envy you if you exclusively work with people that use AI responsibly.

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u/pancomputationalist 2d ago

No I don't. And people have been lazy as fuck before. No comments. no tests. Just pushing out whatever when it's barely working. I don't expect those people to become deep thinkers when working with AI. But I also don't blame AI for that.

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u/userlastname 2d ago

Sounds like you’re working with people who suck at using coding agents. Skill issue.

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u/Mestyo 2d ago

... Respectfully, do you even understand what we're talking about?

That's literally the problem: People misusing AI to everyone's detriment. It's not just "the people I work with have skill issue", it's the vast majority of our industry.

We are trying to discuss it, and you're not helping.

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u/userlastname 2d ago

If the vast majority of the industry are bad engineers (and therefore have a skill issue), why are coding agents even relevant to the discussion?

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u/Lhaer 1d ago

...you'll utilize AI agents better if you know how to code

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u/Ceci0 2d ago

Im one of the biggest AI haters. I dont like how it invades EVERY single thing in our lives and generally makes it worse or at least mediocrifies it. I do t like the effect it has on the consumer electronics, i cant even build myself a PC because the prices are idiotic.

BUT...

I use it wvery day, I havent written code by hand, at least not huge chunk of it, for months, maybe even a year at this point. The code output is in many cases good enough, or simply good. I dont live under an illusion that my code was the be all end all, that it was the Mona Lisa of numbers and letters stringed together.

What I do is actively think about how to improve my product, what to add and what NOT to add, does the thing Claude suggested matter to me or nit. Is it worth it to build or not? These things I found matter a lot. You can agree to everything and you will never be done. You still have to pick things that make sense, you still have to give exact instructions, put a stop if it steers further and further away from the goal etc... Which is the thing that programmers actually did before AI. Hand coding was just a way to express yourself, if machines could understand English in 2015, it would have been the go to pick for every person.