AI is creating a new gap between “people who can generate code” and “people who actually understand systems”
Posted by Amit-saas@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 42 comments
One thing I keep noticing with AI-assisted coding:
A lot of people can now generate code and ship products much faster than before.
But understanding architecture, maintainability, debugging, database design, scalability, and why certain engineering decisions matter still seems rare.
Sometimes AI-generated code looks clean at first glance while the structure underneath is weak or difficult to maintain long term.
It feels like AI is increasing the value of strong fundamentals rather than removing the need for them.
Curious how experienced developers are seeing this in real teams and production environments.
ConversationMuch6376@reddit
I would very much like to stick to what i believe which is both skill and knowledge are necessary to use AI's full potential - so to come to the OP's question - i dont see 'people who generate code' and 'people who know systems' as being different groups - i see them as the same group - AI is not smart at guessing what is in your mind unless it is spelt out in clear concise and well defined terms no? Again sorting/filtering/correcting the mistakes/assumptions it has made requires domain knowledge - no ?
For an experience of what I am talking about visit XDash.Ai - it is totally free and does not sell your data and I am in no way connected to XDash.Ai
Turbopasta@reddit
I'm mostly echoing your post here, but I heard somebody recently say that skill in programming is becoming less about being able to write your own code and more about being able to do good code reviews. Which is just a long way of saying that logic is more important than specific syntax.
The same people who used to copy-paste code blocks from stackoverflow because they didn't understand the language and they wanted a quick solution are still going to suffer if they try to do the same with AI. It's only slightly better at providing solutions, and if the problem is unusual or complex in any way it tends to break down pretty fast unless you can actually verify that the code is appropriate.
jaegernut@reddit
To be able to code review, you still need to understand code, which means learning programming.
Wonderful-Habit-139@reddit
More explicitly, it means writing code. Reading code just gives you the illusion that you're understanding what's happening.
Turbopasta@reddit
yup
edwbuck@reddit
One can't review without some sense of higher-level programming skills, like internal code architecture, processing model, and the caveats and pitfalls specific to the technology choices.
Normally that is learned while you're writing programs in that area of effort. The "being good at reviews" will only go so far, as the understanding of what makes strong code is somewhat eroded by people with weaker writing skills.
Holiday-Medicine4168@reddit
The vibe coding book by gene kim stresses organization and code readability. It’s a really good explanation of how vibe coding should work from the folks who invented it.
Holiday-Medicine4168@reddit
It’s grand I tell you. I’m a 47 year old systems architect and now AI developer. I live in a golden age. 25 years of system design and now the value of people who can actually design scalable secure systems is greater than ever. It used to be that scaling was an after thought and chided as pre optimization. Now things moving to spec driven development moving at the speed of light makes us part of a smaller closed loop who can amplify experience with augmented coding skills. So far AI isn’t fully fleshed out when it comes to system design. I know my day is coming, but I’m riding the wave while I can.
Izaya_Orihara171@reddit
So like, what's the advice for someone looking for their first job? What do I need to work on to become hireable, because this feels more and more unachievable...
Dazzling_Music_2411@reddit
Well, if what u/Holiday-Medicine4168 says is true, the bar has been moved up several notches, and really only proper computer scientists will be up to the job.
Izaya_Orihara171@reddit
I would be very interested, one of the main reasons I picked this path was so I could keep learning and become smarter.
I've honestly felt some kind of way about the AI being able to do so much, because it's stuff I wanted to learn, not hand off to an agent.
What would be a useful project to work on, with an agents assistance, that would still teach these kinds of things?
Dazzling_Music_2411@reddit
Are you already familiar with the basics of machine learning?
Izaya_Orihara171@reddit
Familiar-ish with the very basics. I'd totally be down to learn more though
Dazzling_Music_2411@reddit
Yeah, me too, but I'm trying to get into it as deep as possible. I believe the next stage will be the orchestration of systems and logic with LLMs.
LLMs for the non-deterministic stuff, at which they're brilliant; logic & specs for the predictable stuf that LLMs waste waaaay too much time on, and for control and guardrails.
Looks like a very rich and promising field. Learn logic, systems and distributed computing and use LLMs in that context.
Izaya_Orihara171@reddit
Yeah, I've honestly toyed with n8n to see if I can set up something locally to help people in my town. I don't know if I'm ever getting hired for a software job and I'm 36, I can't keep waiting
Dazzling_Music_2411@reddit
Good luck. I really think people will be hired on proven ability, not book learning in the near future.
Holiday-Medicine4168@reddit
System design. Focus on that and being able to do the stupid leet code list comprehension tests they will ask you. It’s also becoming increasingly important to be able to code without an LLM. One of my interview loops for people is having them live code without one.
Izaya_Orihara171@reddit
Thanks a lot, I'll check the book out for sure. So what's an interesting project that could be done with an agent that would teach system design?
Dazzling_Music_2411@reddit
Interesting take, and I'm inclined to agree.
Initially I thought the whole slop-coding thing was a joke and would soon fizzle out. However, I am now seeing serious stuff coded by AI, except that the developers' idea of "vibe-coding" is providing a fully correct formal spec!!! Hell, yeah, I can buy that, why would anyone want to hassle with minutiae, when you can just give the spec. Maybe Z will come back into fashion, LOL.
I have also seen the opinion that a lot of LLM coding in the future will be done in languages like OCaml, which utilize strong type systems that help the LLMs make the right associations.
So that would be a humorous upturn for the books: "When we said you won't need programmers to generate code any more, we meant you'd only need computer scientists with a strong grounding in algebraic type theory and formal specification. Familiarity with Haskell and Clean will be an advantage"!
Holiday-Medicine4168@reddit
It’s all about reading code and spec development now. The AI slop boom left some bodies and the days of product owners releasing the next killer feature are mercifully over. Oddly enough my first degrees were in liberal arts and I find myself actually using a lot of language skills and philosophy of logic in AI development. development. Cognitive science counts for a lot as well. You need to be a really good communicator to help an AI structure consistent results. That might be the most fun part
Humble_Warthog9711@reddit
And most cannot even write code
Maggie7_Him@reddit
Had this exact realization watching a junior use AI to spin up a full scraper in under an hour — clean code, looked solid. Then it hit the first anti-bot layer and they had no idea how to debug it. The gap isn't 'can you generate something that runs.' It's 'do you understand why it breaks at the seams.'
buildingstuff_daily@reddit
this gap is real and its going to get wider. i can ship a working app in a weekend with ai tools but if something breaks in production at 2am im basically googling the error message like everyone else
the interesting part is that debugging and architecture skills are now MORE valuable not less. when everyone can generate code, the people who understand why the code works become the bottleneck. thats where the money is
the code review point in the comments is spot on. being able to read ai generated code critically is basically the new core skill for developers
Effective_Promise581@reddit
I think we are heading to the era of throw-away code. AI slop code that works for a few months then needs a major modification. Just pitch it and start over.
Fast-Adeptness9669@reddit
Not agreed. There are two types of people: those who understand systems. And those who can write promt = everyone else.
-CJF-@reddit
The cool part is, even the veteran programmers who understand code won't understand AI-generated slop because they didn't write it, they just reviewed it. A lot of software systems designed under AI or heavily contributed to by AI are going to take years to sort out. They are creating a ton of technical debt by pushing the use of AI.
PianoConcertoNo2@reddit
Better hope the people in charge of hiring/laying offs see it the same way.
romii_13@reddit
Another thing that some people don’t think about is the cyber security aspect of it all. SQL injection, XSS, or even hardcoding API keys into the code where someone that knows what they’re doing can inspect the code and take advantage of the system. I can even see an issue of someone uploading a .env file because the user never learned about gitignore.
scandii@reddit
SQL injection wasn't invented in 2022. "X writing insecure code" hasn't really created any new security concerns.
if anything being able to point to OWASP top 10 and go "hey Claude, please audit my code file by file to be complaint with OWASP top 10, do an analysis in a pro and con format, where you are both helping me but also playing devil's advocate in a separate review" is 100x better than the previous standard of "you don't know what you don't know".
herabec@reddit
Except before the pace of development meant that a few expert reviewers could still actually read the volume of code and try to catch these issues. AI can generate code so fast by the time you review it all you've lost most of the benefit of using it in the first place, so code gets pushed un-reviewed.
_N-iX_@reddit
This feels accurate. AI lowers the barrier to producing code, but not to understanding systems. In fact, it makes the gap more visible. You can ship faster, but when something breaks or needs to scale, fundamentals are what determine whether it holds up.
nomoreplsthx@reddit
And yet somehow it hasn't created a gap between people who can generate new and interesting takes and people who can repeat the same six blindingly obvious thing until the heat death of the universe.
We didn't need AI to produce mass volumes of tired and trite takes! Humans did it on their own!
sir_gwain@reddit
Even with AI we’ll always need pros who truly understand the systems they’re working on and can read and understand code, even if it’s generated by AI. I’m mid level, but moved over to development a few years back from another team. From working with devs in my previous role, I think AI has empowered new devs to excel easily, but it can also be a crutch that’s almost too easily accessible. Those same people who relied so heavily on stack overflow before will also rely heavily on AI. It’s the same as people who use dumps for exams, if you’re not learning the content, you’ll skate by for abit, but there will come a time where if you haven’t learned/can’t apply things properly you’ll be “found out” or stuck unable to advance in your career etc.
JohnVonachen@reddit
It’s a giant mistake that companies will eventually have to correct. By the time that happens many out of work SEs will have become unavailable, retired and such.
e1m8b@reddit
There's different ways and stress points in the understanding process that gets offloaded in different ways. In the past, it was front loaded but once understanding achieved, rubber really starts to burn on the road. But with AI assisted faster productivity, it's more learning OTJ training adjacent. The ones interested will be just as capable in understanding as programmers without AI. It's not like everyone invented low level programming from scratch every generation, always built on shoulders of each others.
cheezballs@reddit
All I see is lots of opportunity for real programmers to clean up after that bubble pops. Lots of employment potential.
Striking_Rate_7390@reddit
Devops ??, are you sure all IT fields are near to be closed of AI
Holiday-Medicine4168@reddit
DevOps is not safe. Organized GitOps and IAC let me replace a whole team of cloud ops guys with 5 people including me. That was before AI, and we didn’t have outages because of system design.
johnpaker69@reddit
I think that gap you mentioned. I think that is some state of this AI. I mean AI is rapidly growing. Soon this gap will be gone. Or will remain as a gap but not that big..
Limited_Distractions@reddit
Compilers and interpreted languages did this also, most attempts to "deskill" programming have increased the net complexity of these systems creating knowledge/accountability burdens at least proportional to the things they displaced
It's natural to put coding prowess on a pedestal but most people with programming knowledge are employed so they can be prodded when something goes wrong or to perform maintenance on systems, not to generate code at high velocity which definitely circles back to your point about it mostly being systems knowledge
PeaseErnest@reddit
Ai generated code is this days everywhere GitHub, systems, Whatsapp, windows, bun It is what you produce with the code that matters bun is ai coded fully and it is ok in my thinking ai can generate code yes but ai coded can never be perfect you will have to showrten some code split some ai code is everywhere personally I won't mind using bun just because it is ai generated nope I will use it because it is fast and it works
EmmaWilson01@reddit
Logic has always been more important than code which is why junior developers did most of the code writing work and the senior devs did the architecting, audits, and debugging. As junior devs wrote more code and got more feedback from seniors, their skills and understanding improved. Now that most junior devs are just shipping Ai code, all they are getting good at is prompting and not the actual art and science of coding.
That means those who have an understanding of architectural logic, security, scalability, compliance, and maintainability, are becoming scarce, which makes senior devs more valuable than before and junior devs are more replacement than ever before.