Senior Fullstack Engineer Denis Klymenko believes that today the main threat to young developers is not that AI writes better code. But that it makes the thinking process optional. An approach using AI to solve all problems can deprive young people of their main skills. What do other IT professionals think about this?
Senior Fullstack Engineer Denis Klymenko believes that today the main threat to young developers is not that AI writes better code. But that it makes the thinking process optional. An approach using AI to solve all problems can deprive young people of their main skills. What do other IT professionals think about this?
«This is not about replacing people — it’s about intellectual stagnation,» Denis Klymenko noted in his LinkedIn post.
IT specialist explains that previously, Juniors solved the problems they encountered: they looked for the necessary information, read other people’s code, filtered out the irrelevant, understood the logic, and assembled their own solution.
With the advent of AI, the way to solve problems has changed: people turn to ChatGPT to find a solution, if something needs to be fixed, Copilot will help, if a new framework is needed, then «give me a template» works.
In his opinion, this AI approach to solving a problem deprives the developer of three key skills:
«AI is not the enemy. It’s like a calculator: a great tool, but if you can’t multiply 7×7 without it, that’s a problem. The future doesn’t belong to those who can write prompts. The future belongs to those who think like an engineer: break down the problem, see the architecture, look for alternatives — and use AI as an augmentation, not as a crutch,» writes Denys Klymenko.
So he advises developing an engineering mindset: «Developers who use neural networks as a mentor, not as a magic wand, will cost 10 times more than those who simply copy-paste.»
«Now, with the hype about vibe coding and all sorts of articles like 'it’s better to advise a child to get a tattoo on their face than to teach them programming,' people have the idea that everything is fine, the secret of IT has been revealed, there’s no point in straining anymore, AI will do everything for you. Purely from my own experience, after fruitless attempts to solve a problem using AI, I’m trying to understand the technology or code myself more to see what AI’s advice is useful or harmful,» — Full Stack Developer Yuriy Yakhnytsia.
«I use Cursor Ai, I think it has accelerated my work by 5 times. But first I analyze the task, work out the plan and architecture, how it should look, write out separate prompts and feed them one by one. Then I usually check everything to see if it works at all, usually through Postman. I ask to cover everything with tests and only then do a review and fix what I don’t like. AI is a good tool, but in the hands of a good engineer. It saves time and money accordingly,» — NodeJS Software Engineer Andriy Zilnyk.
«I also use AI to help, but not Cursor Ai, but the built-in AI in PhpStorm. Before writing the prompt, I come up with everything myself and give the AI step-by-step tasks. This really speeds up code writing and saves time,» — Frontend Developer Artem Lira.
«If only it worked that way, he would find a solution. Usually it looks like this — you killed half a day on a promt, you sit down and figure it out yourself in 15 minutes,» — Software Architect Stepan Orda.
» What we are currently observing in the use of AI is a long-known «growing pains». It will take some time, and a much larger part of specialists in various fields will study in more detail (or, at least, get acquainted with) the advantages and disadvantages of such use directly in their practice. And gradually the recovery process will begin. Of course, not everyone will recover, and some will «die» professionally. But this is not new either — this happens all the time with every more or less new technology,» — Technical IT-specialist Igor Ilyashov.
«The thought can be continued: „You are not a developer if you are too lazy to think about which register to put in and why in that particular one.“ Thank you, this has been the case for 40 years. Nothing, code continues to be written and rewritten, and businesses are built, because this is the only thing that actually feeds you and your family. Change or die. It is time for us to change too,» — Senior Unity Developer Artem Sukhlyak.
«I try to beg for the best solutions in ChatGPT, then I analyze them, write them down somewhere, and compile them in general. In short, I live with the thought that someday it will be either expensive or unavailable, and I will have a set of solutions that I managed to collect,» — Software Engineer Andriy Sotnikov.
» I know a couple of people who, due to AI, destroy their knowledge in the first months in IT. In my opinion, a person should be allowed to use AI only when it becomes a tool for them that speeds up their work, and not a friend-assistant who writes almost everything without checks from the developer,» — Back-end developer Dmytro Pohoriliy.
«I completely agree. I conduct interviews and I clearly see how a person, without even spending a second thinking, is already typing something right in front of me and trying to sneak a peek. And I sit there and think: well, it’s strange, you didn’t even spend a second to strain yourself a little,» wrote Frontend Lead, Serhiy Babayev, noting another pain point — copy-paste. «I see chat comments right in PR. That is, devs don’t even glance at what they copy-pasted. And, in my opinion, in 2-3 years it will no longer be a frontend developer, but simply a prompt developer .»
