Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code
A software developer discusses the 'cognitive debt' incurred by over-reliance on AI coding assistants. The author proposes a manual workflow where AI generates code in a chat interface, which the developer then types out manually to ensure full comprehension.
Why it matters
This reflects a growing trend among professionals to balance productivity gains from AI with the need to maintain deep technical expertise and project ownership.
Despite what I said in April , I'm still using coding assistants on my personal projects.
Using them to one-shot entire features leaves me unsatisfied and disoriented, but I do enjoy using them to fast-forward through the boring parts of my projects.
However, allowing my coding assistant to roam free in my projects leaves me with a colossal amount of cognitive debt. I might hate the idea of poring over the Django documentation to figure out how to add tagging to my website, but I still fundamentally want to understand how it works. Just because a problem is boring doesn't mean I want to fully offload my understanding of the solution to a machine.
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