Use AI, Don’t Get Used by AI

During my previous job, my boss once told me:

“No one is manually coding anymore.”

As a junior developer who was still new to the field, I didn’t believe it at first.

I thought, “Why should I rely on AI when I might eventually forget how to write code?”

My boss gave us a free Claude subscription, and during that time, we were using Sonnet 4 and Opus 4.6.

The more we used AI in our daily development, the more I started to understand what he meant.

AI didn’t make coding unnecessary. It changed how I approached coding.

Instead of spending time writing repetitive boilerplate, I could ask AI to help me generate it.

Instead of spending hours trying to understand an unfamiliar error, I could use AI to help me investigate it.

Instead of starting everything from scratch, I could use AI to explore different approaches.

But there was one thing I learned:

Don’t let AI do the thinking for you.

That’s when I realized that the skill isn’t necessarily about writing every single line of code manually anymore.

It’s about understanding the problem, knowing what you want to build, reviewing what AI produces, and knowing when the answer is wrong.

AI can make you faster.

BUT if you stop learning and simply accept everything AI gives you, you’re no longer using AI to improve yourself. You’re becoming dependent on it.

Remember these words: