Why coding knowledge still matters in the age of AI-generated code

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A software developer argues that while AI tools can generate code faster and often cleaner than humans, the critical skills of evaluating correctness, spotting hidden flaws, and understanding trade-offs remain entirely human responsibilities. The author contends that cheap code generation has not eliminated complexity but shifted it — making careful code review more costly and easier to skip, not less important. Developers who cannot read code risk silently accepting poor structural decisions, swallowed errors, or mismatched design patterns embedded in AI output. The piece highlights specific danger zones including debugging, security vulnerabilities, and architecture, where AI-generated solutions can appear locally correct while being globally flawed. The core argument is that coding literacy is no longer about typing speed but about maintaining the judgment needed to verify, challenge, and own what gets built.

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