AO writes: "... other than articulating what I want to achieve, I'm neither building nor utilizing any skills ..."

We write Python and not assembly. What if we could write prose and not Python? Same pattern? This a problem?

Thank you for this post. It provides me with some modicum of relief when I read the opinions of software engineers who have not lost their minds over AI.

I have really given agentic coding a solid shot, and I keep coming back to the same two thoughts:

1. This is not enjoyable. It's impossible to get into any kind of flow (if you think you are flowing with agentic coding, you don't understand flow states) and, other than articulating what I want to achieve, I'm neither building nor utilizing any skills (as you pointed out I'm in fact slowly losing my skill).
2. For anything of novel and/or complex, I SWEAR this is not faster than manual coding; all the tactics suggested to get even remotely close to production code (even setting quality aside) seem to take so much time and effort that you might as well have written the code to begin with.

There are things about AI that I genuinely like, but it's also incredibly frustrating, and all the issues you point out seem spot-on.

Being real: I still want to find a way to leverage it in the right places while still coding manually.

The Emperor has no clothes.

Every day it’s harder to understand how people still believe that AI will do everything. Seeing companies firing because of an automation carried out by AI is undoubtedly something sad to be to see in the technology market.

I believe that the tools that use trained data can help work, increase productivity, but creativity (writing code is also something creative, isn’t it?) It's still people's and that's being lost.

I'm not against using AI tools, they help, but the way it's sold, is very sad.

I very much agree with you; those blowing up the bubble of AI, which is making user's ever more isolated and dependent on tech, won't take responsibility for all their choices and actions that they're inflicting on the world.

I think coders like yourself will be prized in the future as the current coding skill set will be lost among younger generations, with money determining how much people can do.

With climate change developing at alarming rates at the moment, it's arguably more important than ever to grow creative skills that are fostered through hard skills like coding or art, as this will promote us to think outside the box and come up with necessary solutions (eg mycelium-based biotech for data centres).

When I got back into the interviewing and the job market, this all became painfully clear to me. I really struggled with even basic algos because writing and reviewing, it turns out, are not the same thing. I feel I had definitely grown as an architect and a system designer, but I am not sure I fully understood the scope and speed of skill atrophy.