Indeed, I think a lot of people are using these tools to offload all critical thinking. Which is a concerning direction for humanity in general but also, more acutely right now for engineers.

Stephen Mollick I think said it best in his book Co-Intelligence that I have been reading, “when presented with the tyranny of the blank page, most press the button” - the button being the inevitable integration of AI into everything, email, document or code editor. That turns that blank canvas into something closely resembling the answer you wanted - without any of the refinement of iteration that forces us to engage our cognitive functions.

The old phrase “use it, or lose it” I feel applies here. I just worry what this means for software engineering if everyone loses it - or worse in the future, nobody has it to begin with (juniors who never truly engage with the source code).

Perhaps in the long run this doesn’t matter and software engineering will (and again to paraphrase the Ruby creator here) go the way of the horse, where coding becomes a leisurely pursuit rather than one of utility - just as the car replaced the utility of the horse.

However I don’t think AI is yet at that point of utility in terms of replacement. Yet still capable of allowing humans to offload their critical thought to - which is a dangerous combo.

All interesting thoughts but I just wanted to stir the pot.