We’re about to learn a painful lesson about delayed gratification in software engineering.

New data from China, 26,811 students tracked January 2023 through June 2025. Students using AI for homework saw their scores jump 20 percent. Completion time dropped nearly half. They aced the assignments.

Then exam season came. Those same students scored 20 to 40 percent worse when they couldn’t use the tool.

The homework phase is over. The exam phase is coming.

We’re doing this in software right now. Vibe coding feels incredible. Features ship fast. Nobody’s asking what happens in Month 18 when the original dev has left and nobody understands the codebase.

Commercial pilots fly with autopilot for most of every flight. They’re required to maintain manual flying proficiency regardless. If the system fails mid-air and the pilot can’t take over, people die.

Most teams using AI right now have forgotten how to fly manually. They’ve become passengers in their own systems. The autopilot flies, nobody checks instruments, and the first sign of trouble will be a breach notice or outage.

Three rules:

  1. Command the mission. Define architecture before prompting. Ambiguity kills in code and in flight. Delegate selectively. Offload mechanical work. Keep design and security reviews human. Verify everything. Audit before production.
  1. Never trust the automation without checking instruments.
  1. Quick wins feel good. Sustainable engineering feels boring. Boring keeps systems standing.

Organisations surviving the next two years won’t ship the fastest. They’ll be the ones who remember how to fly without the aids.

people insisting that you actually be skilled, independently of your tools, doesn’t make them Luddites. Rather, being unable to do so makes you a phony.

  • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
    3·
    8 hours ago

    we were talking about the need for radical education reform over a decade ago

    Education, and especially critical thinking, has been systematically gutted by conservative governments for at least 4 decades in the Western world. The goal is the absolute minimum knowledge and thinking skills (preferably without learning skills) necessary to complete the wage slavery tasks.

    • huey_m@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      7 hours ago

      Absolutely agreed, though the problem goes beyond just funding… a lot of countries still have a very small c conservative, traditionalist, Prussian-style education system that focuses on things like rote memorization, date and event-based history education rather than critical historical analysis, etc. These existed before the great defunding and are also an albatross around the neck of education that needs to be reformed away.

      Education really just needs a ground-up restructuring and rethinking, and boy is it going to be hard to make people shake up some of their preconceived notions on education.

      But yeah, none of that means anything without funding and is counter to some political goals, very true.

      • MalReynolds@slrpnk.netEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        Hard agree on Prussian-style education (which had similar goals of wage slavery when it was introduced). Unfortunately the pessimist in me thinks reform will likely have to wait until after this round of fascism has run its course, but it absolutely need to be a high priority when the time comes. Best time to plant a seed is twenty years ago…

        • huey_m@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          6 hours ago

          reform will likely have to wait until after this round of fascism has run its course

          Quite right. Honestly, even if we could do it now, might be best to wait until after considering who may be in charge during said reforms…