“AI writes the code now. Developers only need to know what to build and how to guide it.”
That idea sounds convincing.
But Mala Gupta’s post highlights what it misses: engineering judgment does not appear automatically when AI starts generating code.
🔸 TLDR
AI can generate code, but it cannot instantly give someone engineering judgment.
That judgment is built through practice, failure, debugging and repetition.
🔸 JUDGMENT COMES FROM PRACTICE
Knowing what to build, which problem is worth solving, and whether a proposed solution is actually good comes from experience.
It comes from:
▪️ Writing code that fails
▪️ Debugging unexpected behaviour
▪️ Choosing the wrong abstraction
▪️ Refactoring poor decisions
▪️ Trying again with a better understanding
The failures are not separate from the learning.
They are the learning.
🔸 YOU CANNOT GUIDE WHAT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND
People often say developers will simply “guide the AI.”
But guiding an AI requires the same skills needed to guide a junior developer:
▪️ Clarifying the problem
▪️ Detecting false assumptions
▪️ Reviewing the design
▪️ Evaluating trade-offs
▪️ Recognising plausible but incorrect answers
Without strong technical foundations, AI assistance can quickly become blind acceptance.
🔸 THE STRUGGLE IS CHANGING, NOT DISAPPEARING
Developers may spend less time fighting syntax.
But they will spend more time validating generated code, integrating systems, reviewing architecture, checking security and identifying hidden risks.
The difficult part of software development was never only typing code.
It was learning how to think.
🔸 TAKEAWAYS
▪️ Use AI to accelerate learning, not replace it
▪️ Keep building things yourself
▪️ Treat failure as valuable feedback
▪️ Validate generated code carefully
▪️ Remember that better prompts come from deeper understanding
Code is not dead.
The way we produce it is evolving.
But learning through failure remains one of the strongest ways to become a better engineer. 🚀
-- Inspired by Mala Gupta’s excellent reflection.
#SoftwareDevelopment #ArtificialIntelligence #Coding #Programming #SoftwareEngineering #GenerativeAI #LearningToCode #Developer
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