I’m old enough to remember driving without maps or navigation. Soon, we won’t remember a time before AI coding either. Does driving without maps make me a better driver now? I don’t think so. Does knowing how to code without AI help make me a better engineer? It does… for now.
I saw a social media post about making fun of boomers for ignoring Google Maps instructions. I scrolled through a page of mostly correct zoomer kids’ smug comments and something struck me: these kids are idiots. They don’t know that navigation algorithms explicitly exclude many private and local roads. The algorithm doesn’t know that along mile 327, the exit-only lane is always empty while the others are clogged. It will get you there, but it works best when the driver has the experience to know when to disobey it. The kids don’t know these things because their whole lives, they’ve had routes handed to them. It’s never crossed their minds that things could be different, that the route could be better.
These days, I’m course-correcting AI coding tools at least 70% of the time when I see them making bad decisions. Over time, they’ll get smarter (they better or I want a refund!). But like driving, they’ll never match lived experience in every situation.