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Software developers who have been encouraged to heavily incorporate AI into their day-to-day work are finding that it has diminished their coding skills.
404 Media interviewed programmers at various software companies and found that the sheer quantity of code output by AI is leading many to skip audits and ship products without effective oversight. Others are burning out from the mental load of trying to prompt AI to do what they want.
The promise of AI was that it would handle the boring, daily tasks and free humans for more creative work. But that seems to be a bit of a pipe dream. Instead, we get major companies laying off tens of thousands of employees to help fund the massive data centers required to power their AI. The workers who remain are being forced to make the most of it, but they're finding that it's having a deleterious effect on their capabilities.
One programmer lamented to 404 Media that they were being encouraged to use AI agents to implement sweeping codebase changes that are too large to effectively track, leaving them concerned about security and efficiency. This bad-code debt will probably only come to light when these codebases need updating or adjusting in the future, he suggests. By then, no one will understand how it all works, because they vibe-coded their way to the initial version.
Others point to their own skills diminishing. One person forgot how to implement a particular web application framework, something they'd studied in college. They likened the feeling to forgetting a phone number they no longer needed to remember after getting a smartphone.
Vibe coding can help programmers ship faster, but why stop there? What happens when it stops being a jumping-off point and totally takes over, with the employee prompting but not really digging into the code?
Some programmers see a cliff-edge coming, too. As companies like Microsoft switch to per-token billing, there is concern that AI pricing will rise dramatically in the near future, prompting companies to use AI less and making it even harder to fix the mess AI has created.
As 404 Media notes, more and more threads are popping up on sites like Hacker News and Reddit, where software developers are looking to return to pure manual coding. It might not be easy with bosses breathing down their necks to use AI, but for some, it's worth trying to find a way to hang on to their raw abilities. Without them, they're just shepherding error-prone AI.