We’re about to learn a painful lesson about delayed gratification in software engineering.
New data from China, 26,811 students tracked January 2023 through June 2025. Students using AI for homework saw their scores jump 20 percent. Completion time dropped nearly half. They aced the assignments.
Then exam season came. Those same students scored 20 to 40 percent worse when they couldn’t use the tool.
The homework phase is over. The exam phase is coming.
We’re doing this in software right now. Vibe coding feels incredible. Features ship fast. Nobody’s asking what happens in Month 18 when the original dev has left and nobody understands the codebase.
Commercial pilots fly with autopilot for most of every flight. They’re required to maintain manual flying proficiency regardless. If the system fails mid-air and the pilot can’t take over, people die.
Most teams using AI right now have forgotten how to fly manually. They’ve become passengers in their own systems. The autopilot flies, nobody checks instruments, and the first sign of trouble will be a breach notice or outage.
Three rules:
- Command the mission. Define architecture before prompting. Ambiguity kills in code and in flight. Delegate selectively. Offload mechanical work. Keep design and security reviews human. Verify everything. Audit before production.
- Never trust the automation without checking instruments.
- Quick wins feel good. Sustainable engineering feels boring. Boring keeps systems standing.
Organisations surviving the next two years won’t ship the fastest. They’ll be the ones who remember how to fly without the aids.
people insisting that you actually be skilled, independently of your tools, doesn’t make them Luddites. Rather, being unable to do so makes you a phony.
I feel like their point was that the gains of technology were not distributed fairly, which is largely the concern today. It’s not “technology is bad”, or “technology make bad thing”; rather, “the owners of the machine undercut our labor, and we lose our jobs”, which I think was true. In the modern world, there are likely less tailors, as a percentage of the working population, certainly in first world countries. Sweatshops still exist, and it’s people’s labor competing against a production line, in terms of ROI for a business.
I get the sense we all know AI isn’t going to bring about a uptopia for all people, because the economic systems don’t incentivize that. There’s some hypothetical world where this sort of technological advance could benefit all people, but it’s not the one we live in. That’s a reality & major problem for the technology (among other issues).
I certainly think the cost of labor for tech development is going to drop significantly due to the market pressures; look at all the tech layoffs. At the same time, the upside is these tools make certain projects accessible & possible, because prior, would have needed significant funding, amazing solo skills, etc. There’s new opportunities available, but it’ll come at the cost of cratering tech position compensation & job security.
I don’t know anyone in my field right now who feels safe (game dev), and I have many talented friends out of work.
Just look at any productivity vs wage growth chart from any country. Anyone who thinks that any efficiency gain will pay off for workers is either naive or part of the grift.