Very salient point. My take on this (and I know it’s not very popular on HN) is that trying to preserve every pre-AI coding skill is probably a fruitless endeavor.
AI-assisted coding is here and it’s not going anywhere. In the same way most modern software engineers aren’t writing assembly anymore, I don’t think future engineers will need to understand exactly how every part of a codebase works under the hood. It’s just another layer of abstraction.
Having said that, I do think knowledge of architecture/performance/security remains a pretty large part of prompting correctly, although more conceptually than actual implementation. As long as you’re still using those concepts in your prompting, you can keep that judgment sharp, even if some of the implementation fluency fades.
For example, with the boxing analogy, yes, you lose some boxing skills, but you’re also becoming a way better boxing coach by consistently teaching it. I think that’s the tradeoff.
AI-assisted coding is here and it’s not going anywhere. In the same way most modern software engineers aren’t writing assembly anymore, I don’t think future engineers will need to understand exactly how every part of a codebase works under the hood. It’s just another layer of abstraction.
Having said that, I do think knowledge of architecture/performance/security remains a pretty large part of prompting correctly, although more conceptually than actual implementation. As long as you’re still using those concepts in your prompting, you can keep that judgment sharp, even if some of the implementation fluency fades.
For example, with the boxing analogy, yes, you lose some boxing skills, but you’re also becoming a way better boxing coach by consistently teaching it. I think that’s the tradeoff.