I want to share a story about something that has been bothering me for quite a while. I work as a software engineer at a tech company where we use the latest and greatest AI tools available on the market. Recently, I got a requirement to automate the validation of a CSV file schema against an XML file schema to check the column names. Instinctively, I thought this was a small task and decided to ask AI (using the GPT-5.2 model) to generate the complete script.
After understanding the requirements, I started prompting the AI. After a few iterations, I got a script that promised success. I started testing it, but guess what? It didn't even compile. I went back to prompting and eventually got a script that compiled, but it was working haphazardly. I figured that since I at least had a Python script, I could just refine it myself to meet my deadline. But the code was so verbose and all over the place that I got completely confused. Ultimately, I deleted everything and wrote the script myself from scratch.
This isn't an isolated incident; it's a pattern I'm seeing all across the industry. AI spits out sloppy code and calls it a day. I was baffled by a recent move from Cursor and how they are deceiving the public. They published a blog post claiming they built a web browser from scratch in a week, and they even provided a GitHub link for others to test it. Guess what? That code wasn't compiling either.
The problem is that investors won't try to compile the code. They just see flashy demos, get impressed, and give money to these companies. Because of this, expectations for developers are getting bigger and bigger. A junior developer is now treated like a Staff Engineer (which really just translates to more responsibility for less money).
On the flip side, even developers are trying to delegate all their tasks to AI, treating it like a mindless slave. This is a very bad thing. If an engineer doesn't understand the context and the foundational basics of a technology, they won't be able to fix it when it inevitably breaks—no matter how hard they try to prompt a chatbot.
So, here is the reminder I give myself: AI is great if you use it as a tool. Just don't replace yourself in the process. Don't simply delegate the entire task of creating programs to it. Understand the basics, grasp the context, and then use the tool for what it's actually meant for.
Thanks for reading.
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