Most computer science programs don't teach "coding" though. There is pretty heavy emphasis on datastructures, algorithms, and system design. I don't think AI atrophies those skills / knowledge as much as the coding language and I think in many cases actually improves them, especially if you are reading the code that is produced and at least understanding the flow of it.
I agree that AI reliance is hurting engineer's language understanding, but I don't know how much we should care.
> especially if you are reading the code that is produced and at least understanding the flow of it.
This is the key point. Should we stay vigilant and review all the code, ensuring we have a decept grasp of what it does. Or just green light everything and treat the code itself as a black box. I would hope we do the former, but many are pushing for the latter.
> Most computer science programs don't teach "coding" though. There is pretty heavy emphasis on datastructures, algorithms, and system design
Those skills are often taught in an idealized situation like very small projects. In the real world, there are a lot more practices and techniques to develop software in a pragmatic way. Those "engineering practices" are much more useful than the above, unless you're in some specific domains.
I don't think that's quite correct; every CS program I've seen involves writing code, quite a lot of it. What they don't teach is /software engineering/: working large codebases, maintaining code, dealing with legacy code, long-term collaboration, working with product managed and designers, etc. That's stuff that you mostly end up having to pickup in the real world outside school.