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How are you fighting back against skill atrophy caused by AI at work? (lemmy.zip)
submitted 6 hours ago* by to c/programming@programming.dev
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I currently work at an "AI First" 🤢 fintech company, and we're mandated to program agentically. I was fortunate enough to start working before the AI hype, but the environment right now is daunting.

There's too much unmaintainable code slop and throw away scripts committed that I can't keep track anymore. Each PR has so much diffs that it feels like someone had diarrhea and shat all over.

I try to manually review the code, but it feels like best effort at most. Like I may only understand 70% of the thing that I'm reviewing. What ends up happening usually is that I just ask the model and verify the output(which is horrifying I know)

I spend the whole day arguing with AI, reviewing, and pushing back against its output that sometimes I wonder if I am the one driving AI or is it driving me.

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Recently, I noticed that I've becoming more reliant on the model and that my skills have been atrophying. What would've taken me an afternoon if I program it by hand, would take me a week now if I do it now. I also find my head hurting and myself glossing over the code in code reviews and prompting claude to do even the basic of commands.

I get that there's more to programming in software engineering (collaboration, dealing with people, etc etc), but I don't feel like I am in control of the systems I am building anymore with the engineering aspect being replaced with babysitting and self lobotomy.

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Off work hours, I try to brush up by reading on system design and architecture books, typing by hand if I'm learning a new technology or stack, but I feel like it's not enough to prevent from skill atrophy.

How are y'all coping and how do you recover from this? I am afraid on what skills that I'll be able to bring at my next place of employment if I resign and that I'm becoming a jack of all trades master of none type of thing - having only shallow understanding.

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[–] 1 point 2 hours ago*

In short - I'm not.

This is a "buggy whip manufacturer" moment. Software development as we currently understand the practice is no longer needed in volume. Just like buggy whips no longer need as many craftsman making them since the advent of the internal combustion engine.

Yes, some people will still be "line editors" just like there are still some people preserving older skills and manufacturing niche items like buggy whips for the handful of horse-drawn buggies that still exist and are in-use.

But the vast majority of software going forward will be produced by LLMs. The skills required to "drive" the new LLM engine is an altogther different set of skills than what is required to whip and steer horses. Everyone fighting this tide is just fighting the inevitable.

Instead, I'm moving "up the stack" and focusing on answering the question, "What testing is difficult to game and shows me that the work has been done adequately to spec?"

The LLM-enabled future needs more mathematicians than it needs code-writers. The vast majority of anti-LLM Luddites I see online are all people who are "coders"; the "computer scientists" are busy adapting to a future that is already here.

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