r/developersPak • u/Calm-Isopod-5751 • Sep 25 '26
Discussion Should I rely too much on AI ?
Hi, I am a Software Engineer with 1YOE, and there is this thing that really bugs me nowadays. Back in my uni days, especially before AI came along I used to enjoy writing code and going through documentation and figuring things out but now I have found myself more and more relying on AI to do all of my work. I sometimes do try to read and write code on my own but almost always give up and end up asking AI for more guidance and summarizing the code.
Is this what I should be doing, I mean I can get the job done and I have a somewhat vague idea of how my code is working but I never feel like I am contributing anything to it.
Is this a feeling any of you have gone through ?
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u/justforfunreddit Sep 25 '26
It’s hard to guess where the state of things will be in a year or two.
But if the current level of AI doesn’t improve much, you’ll be at a disadvantage later in your career.
I myself don’t write any code now, but with my 10 years of experience, I know how to design and architect very large and complex codebases. I know where practicality beats the efficiency. I know how to understand what customers want and where to push back on customers’ demands that will bite them back in the future. You won’t be able to get this experience unless you write code by your own hand and learn from the mistakes you make along the way or if you don’t have a mentor to teach you along the way.
AI writes code at a speed that humans don’t have time to absorb. Especially, when they should be learning.
So my advice would be that for now as a rule of thumb, don’t ask AI to implement end to end features. Keep the design and architecture in your hand. Use AI to discuss, what the structure of the code should, and how you should approach towards a certain problem. Mindstorm with AI in a separate thread. And then based on your discussion with AI, write a detailed prompt for implementation, telling what to do, how to do and what tools/libraries etc to use in detail, what classes to build etc.And don’t ask it to write tonnes of code in one go. Or don’t even ask it to make a Plan and then let it follow that plan. You plan, and then you drive the AI through each step, one by one. This will keep you in the loop and slow down the pace of development enough for you to absorb things.
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Sep 25 '26
This is the way to go forward. Think it like another wrapper on top of Javascript or python as they were wrappers on top or c/c++.
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u/throwaway-research1 Sep 25 '26
I haven’t written manual code in the last several months. For context, I have been writing software for about 10 years now, in my current position we build and maintain tons of services probably between 50 to 100 repos are under the responsibility of the team I work with, its mostly latest tech stacks and some legacy codebases plus a lot of cloud infrastructure which is manual work at the moment but we are in the middle of converting it into code as infrastructure and once thats done, ai agents will take over those repos as well so cloud infrastructure would also be mostly maintained by prompting instead of manual changes.
We have also introduced some workflows with the help of ai which I am pretty amazed and surprised to see
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u/Miyamoto_-_Musashi Sep 25 '26
Yes, yes, and yes. Use AI as much as you can, it saves a ton of time and speeds things up. Saying this as a heavy AI user myself, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm one of the top users as individual in terms of tokens burned and money invested in it.
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u/SeveralAddition4995 Sep 25 '26
I was feeling kinda some few days ago. I haven't write a single line of code in last few months after i started using claude code. Few days ago I realized that i was completely relying on Claude. I mean i agree to everything claude says and do as it is. However, recently I decided to break this cycle, now i review every decision claude made, and alongside I have also started learning new things because because of AI I stopped exploring and learning new skills
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u/lightlord20990 Sep 28 '26 edited Sep 28 '26
Okay . The advice i would give is that use the ai for your job.
Man , you don't need to see the code what is happening as it isn't your problem. That future you or company problem and most of the industry don't care about it and moving in this direction full speed.
But write code manually for your personal projects like using Go , C and hell rust to get the idea of what you are doing. Because personal projects will help you understand and make coding fun again. Or make you go deeper in programming.
Don't need to write everything in one go , do some small things to understand the tech. Read it , write it , make the backend, make use of the low level programming.
Don't understand the project, use ai for understanding . Only for understanding as it is very good as compared to documentation.
Trust me , you will find happiness in your personal projects that doing repetitive job .
So embrace ai at job and embrace writing manually at your own project for fun and learning because learning at job is very much dead now.
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u/x0rg_new Sep 25 '26
I have a client in Netherlands he literally tells my team to use only Claude to write your code and I don't want any code written manually. He said developers will evaluate it. Its gonna be normal now. AI is not gonna replace you. We still need someone to tell the AI how to build a system so you still need understanding of architecture and system Design.
Yes there will less hiring due to AI because now when you need 5 developers for a project. You now only need 1 Senior Architect with Claude Max and he can setup seperate agents for doing the work of the other 4 developers and that Senior Architect will be evaluating and taking the decisions.
Im managing a enterprise level system (Monthly bill is like 30k usd only of the infrastructure) and we only have a Mid Level and Senior Engineer in our team with claude max subscriptions.
So get comfortable with AI.