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.
the “article” that doesn’t mention luddites at all until a comment at the end that kinda agrees with what i’m saying or the wikipedia article that points out the luddites issues being about labour and generally being replaced by machines? i know very well the nuance of the luddite movement and their main good points, as i said, were about labour issues (mostly solved with labour laws on modern society) and the takeaway isn’t about technology but about how to deal with technology replacing people’s jobs
replacing artisans with machines that do a good enough or better job is a good thing, as painful as it is… it means more people get more of the thing… artisans instead of machines is a waste… humans are the most inefficient general machine we have… having a human make clothing is a cost on society
The point is that the Luddites (most of them anyway) weren’t against mechanization at all, it was all about the specific conditions under which it happened, i.e. rich people owned the means of production and until maybe late 19th century, living conditions for the working class were absolutely appalling and a clear downgrade over what they had before. 16 hour shifts at poverty wages are not necessary for industrialization, yet that’s usually how it happened.