As an efficient programmer, I've been using AI tools like Copilot or Cursor in my daily life. It definitely speeds up the whole process and makes it easier to ship real products.
However, there is a big problem with using tools that powerful.
Back in the day, when you encountered a problem, you just had to Google it. If there was no easy way to fix it, you'd either have to deep dive into the concept you were struggling with or get help from someone else.
Then someone else (or you, with more knowledge about the topic) could look deeper into the code and find that the whole problem was in your approach. Instead of just dully fixing the issue, maybe you should change the whole approach — use other tools, libraries, or re-write the whole structure in a more efficient way?
With AI, solving problems looks completely different.
When you encounter a problem you can’t solve on your own, you just prompt it to an AI and boom — it gets solved. AI just finds a way to fix it. The code itself might work, but it can be very poor.
Why am I writing this?
Recently, I was doing a freelance project for a client. Everything was going great, and I had a deadline I’d easily meet. But one day, when I was out of the house with not much free time, the client asked me to make a "demo" example for the next day. The app was working, with some flaws I had to fix ASAP. So I just opened a Gemini CLI and started prompting. After a few unsuccessful prompts, I was finally able to fix the issues and finish the demo version.
When I got back home, I started working on the project again. I looked at the code that AI had generated — it was awful. Then, on my own, I reviewed the whole codebase and realized the problem was much deeper. I just didn’t need that thing at all.
If I had trusted the AI fully, I would’ve ended up with a useless feature that just litters my app.
I believe I’m not the only one. Situations like this happen every day, and some people never realize how much AI screwed their code.
Let’s start being more like real programmers instead of vibe coders.
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