Artificial intelligence tools are changing how software developers write and debug code, but not everyone is convinced the shift is positive. One software engineer has raised concerns that coding agents may be making developers faster while weakening their understanding of the systems they build.
The post was shared by X user Sambhav Gandhi. In the caption, he wrote, “AI has completely changed what I loved about software engineering.” He recalled how developers once spent time understanding a problem, writing code, breaking it, debugging it and eventually taking ownership of the solution.
Gandhi said that process is changing as developers increasingly rely on AI agents to write code. “AI generates thousands of lines we barely read. The code becomes a black box,” he wrote.
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Is AI making software engineers less skilled?
Gandhi argued that the issue is not simply that AI writes code, but that developers may gradually lose ownership of their codebases. According to him, when something breaks, engineers can find themselves debugging systems they never fully understood.
{{/usCountry}}Gandhi argued that the issue is not simply that AI writes code, but that developers may gradually lose ownership of their codebases. According to him, when something breaks, engineers can find themselves debugging systems they never fully understood.
{{/usCountry}}He also raised concerns about the effect of constantly delegating technical thinking to AI tools. He said this could affect developers’ ability to patiently read, reason about and understand code.
“Maybe we’re shipping faster,” Gandhi wrote. “But sometimes it genuinely feels like we’re becoming worse engineers while our codebases become harder to understand.”
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What did internet users say about AI coding?
The post drew a range of opinions from programmers and other technology users. One commenter compared the situation to a cycle in which developers use AI to build software and then rely on newer AI systems to fix problems created by earlier versions.
“Sometimes feels like we are racing: use AI to build your codebase, and hope AI keeps improving so that it can untangle all the knots that previous versions made. Cycle continues and continues,” the person wrote.
Another commenter offered a simpler solution: “You just have to find harder things to do. That's all.”
Some users, however, argued that AI-assisted coding has already made their work easier. “On the flip side, I’ve had bugs in my code base that I had been trying to figure out for far too long that AI fixed in minutes,” one person wrote.
Another compared AI-assisted coding with earlier shifts in programming, asking, “I think most programmers were happy to move on from binary and assembly coding. Isn't this the same thing we're seeing with AI assisted coding?”
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One commenter pushed back on concerns that AI is taking over software engineering, writing, “You literally can still do that and still should while using AI. Anyone thinking AI is taking over or ruined things doesn’t understand how to use it.”
(Disclaimer: This report is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.)