How can we solve this at a more fundamental level?

I think many people already recognize the problem:

-“Our ability to write code is being damaged.” -“If our ability to write code declines, our ability to recognize good code also declines.”

But the problem is that the market no longer works without LLMs.

Freelance rates and deadlines are now calibrated around LLM-assisted output. Even clients who write “do not vibe code” often set deadlines that are impossible to meet unless you use something like vibe coding. The client’s expectations themselves are becoming abnormal.

That is the irony of the market.

I honestly do not know what to do.

Recent Hacker News discussions are mostly a negative echo chamber about AI use. In other places, it is often the opposite: only positive echo. But almost nobody discusses the actual solution.

The main topics I keep seeing are roughly these:

1. Is the large repository PR system failing a fundamental stress test? Or should AI-generated(GEN AI) code simply not be merged? If PR review is moving from handmade production to mass production, how should the PR system change? Or should it remain the same?

2. As vendor lock-in continues, can we move toward local LLMs to escape it? Are cost and harness design manageable? What level of local model is required to reach a similar coding speed?

3. If we are forced to use agentic coding, how do we avoid damaging our own ability to code? There is a passage from Christopher Alexander that I keep thinking about:

“A whole academic field has grown up around the idea of ‘design methods’—and I have been hailed as one of the leading exponents of these so-called design methods. I am very sorry that this has happened, and want to state, publicly, that I reject the whole idea of design methods as a subject of study, since I think it is absurd to separate the study of designing from the practice of design. In fact, people who study design methods without also practicing design are almost always frustrated designers who have no sap in them, who have lost, or never had, the urge to shape things.” — Christopher Alexander, 1971

This quote feels relevant to programming now. If we separate the study and supervision fo programming from the actual practice of making, something important may be lost.

In architecture, there is this idea that without practice, the architect loses meaning. But now the market is forcing the separation.

People with enough symbolic capital and high status have the freedom not to use AI. But people lower in the market are under pressure to use it.

So I think the discussion now needs to move beyond whether AI coding is good or bad.

The real question is How do we keep using AI because the market demands it, while still preserving the human practice that makes programming meaningful and keeps our judgment alive?

I think these are the important question. How do you maintain market value without using AI?

Or, if you do use AI, how do you avoid being treated as low-quality?

If you do not use AI, how can you remain more competitive than people who do use it?

If you do use AI, what advanatge do you have over people who do not use it, and how should you position yourself?

I know that agentic coding can cause skill degradation. I can feel it happening to me already. But for someone like me, who does not have strong status, credentials, or symbolic capital, social and market pressure makes AI almost unavoidable.

What frustrates me is that I do not see practical answers anywhere.