cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/56563524

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:

  1. 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.
  1. Never trust the automation without checking instruments.
  1. 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.

  • snoons@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    I object to the negative use of “Luddites”. Luddites were working class people who used direct action as their only means of bargaining. These were met with extreme violence, often ending in the death or execution of the protesting/rioting workers.

    I think the Luddite movement bares many similarities to anti-AI sentiment today; particularly with general support for robbing AI data centres or ruining them in some other way.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites

    • Broadfern@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      Hard agree. Anti-Luddite sentiment is corporate propaganda.

      The movement didn’t naturally fizzle out; it was actively repressed and punished by the government.

      Luddites didn’t hate the technology so much as they hated how the technology was being used to destroy their livelihoods and further marginalize them. Hard to judge someone for trying to survive in the face of so much cruelty.

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
      11·
      2 months ago

      Languages evolve over time. It’s meaning changed to the equivalent of a technophobe a long time ago.