> With coding, I've been using AI entirely for a year or two. I've been entirely prompting and I haven't written a single line of code. I have mostly forgotten how to code
I've been using AI coding tools a lot lately, though I'm always in the loop. I write most of the important code by hand, but I like to send Claude Code or Codex off to try to come up with a solution in parallel to compare.
Having reviewed so much of my hand-written code side by side with AI-written alternatives, I am still amazed that anyone admits to letting AI write all of their code. Either you're working on much simpler problems than I am, or you don't really care about anything other than making the tests go green and waiting for bug reports to come back so you can feed them back into the LLM again.
Some times the coding tools come back with better ideas than I came up with. Some times my idea is much better. Most often with medium to high complexity problems, if the AI comes up with a working solution it has enough problems that an attentive human reviewer would have rejected it at best. At worst, it creates a mess of spaghetti code with maintenance time bombs ticking away. And that's for one change. I can't imagine what a codebase would look like if you completely deferred to AI tools to do everything.
This quote is even weirder because they claim to have been doing this for two years! Two years ago, coding tools were much worse than they are today. Using AI to write all of your code 2 years ago would have been a weird choice.
When I read posts like this I don't know what to think. Is this real? Or is it exaggerated for effect?
I also roll my eyes a little bit at the idea that not writing code for 1-2 years means you forget how to code. I've been back and forth between 100% management and 100% IC in my career. While there is a warm-up time to get back into coding, you should not completely forget how to code after such a short time. The only reason this person feels like they've forgotten how to code is that they've made a choice not to code for 2 years and, apparently, they don't feel like making any effort to change this. For someone who claims to love writing code, I don't get it. Something doesn't make sense about this writing.
When I wrote this I overlooked the fact that I was in management for years before, which is possibly the actual real reason I forgot how to code. I've probably also been avoiding coding by hand. That was a choice. When I went back into IC, I probably didn't feel good enough for the seniority level that I was at and rather than working to improve myself, I used AI.
Thanks for your comments. I didn't realise until I read this.