There was a time not so long ago when I would obsess over every line of code.
Formatting. Naming. Efficiency. Pure logic flow. That nerdy satisfaction of getting a function just right.
Fast forward to now?
I open a file, type half a line, and Copilot eagerly finishes my thought like we’ve been coding together for years.
And honestly? I kinda love it.
Yeah AI coding assistants have made me lazy.
But it’s a useful kind of lazy.
I Don’t Write Boilerplate Anymore. I Don’t Miss It.
Remember writing useEffect(() => {}, []) for the thousandth time?
Or spinning up the same Express route handler with the same error checks?
Yeah, I don’t do that anymore. Copilot does.
At some point in 2023, something shifted in how I wrote software.
Instead of crafting everything from scratch, I started treating the editor like a conversation.
"Here’s what I want."
"Okay, here’s a first draft."
"Close, but tweak this, that, and remove the nonsense."
It’s less typing. Less thinking about syntax.
More about shaping an idea into reality faster.
And look, I still refactor, still test, still think about architecture.
But I no longer spend brainpower on res.status(500).json({ error })
And I don’t feel bad about it.
It's Just the Next Level of Abstraction
People act like this shift is the end of programming.
But we’ve always been abstracting things away.
No one builds apps in assembly (and if you do, respect).
We moved from writing raw SQL to using ORMs.
From manually managing DOM trees to declarative frameworks like React.
From for loops to map and filter.
So why wouldn’t we abstract typing itself?
Coding assistants aren’t cheating they’re automation.
And automation is what we do best.
The Risk: You Stop Thinking Like an Engineer
Here’s where it gets tricky though.
When Copilot nails 90% of your code, it’s easy to stop questioning it.
You trust the suggestion. You stop wondering why it works. You just move on.
That’s dangerous.
Because when something doesn’t work or worse, works but in the wrong way you better hope you actually understand what it’s doing.
I’ve reviewed AI-generated code that looked perfect but had subtle async bugs.
Or sneaky performance issues. Or logic that worked in tests but failed in production with real users.
The assistants are helpful. But they’re not architects. They don’t understand the business logic, the edge cases, or the bigger picture.
That’s still your job.
Real Engineering Still Matters
The stuff AI can’t do (yet) is exactly where we need to show up.
It can’t:
- Push back on a bad product decision.
- Redesign a system to support scale.
- Communicate trade-offs to stakeholders.
- Build trust on a team.
- Diagnose a ghost bug in production logs at 2am when nothing makes sense.
These aren’t “coding” tasks. They’re engineering tasks.
And they’re the ones that make you valuable beyond what Copilot can autocomplete.
The Layoffs Made It Real
We’ve all felt the pressure lately.
Layoffs. Hiring freezes. Teams shrinking while expectations keep growing.
And in parallel, AI tools popping up everywhere promising to “10x productivity.”
It’s hard not to feel like we’re automating ourselves out of jobs.
But here’s my take: AI didn’t kill junior roles. Bad leadership and short-sighted planning did.
The assistants didn’t replace us. They just changed the expectations.
Now, you have to bring more to the table than just being a good typist.
So Yeah I’m Lazy Now
But lazy doesn’t mean careless.
Lazy means efficient. Lazy means optimizing my time for the hard parts.
The fun parts. The stuff that makes software feel good.
Let Copilot write your axios calls. Let GPT refactor that utility function.
Save your brain for the decisions that actually matter.
And when someone asks, “Aren’t you worried the AI will replace you?”
Just smile and say, “Only if I stop thinking.”
How’s Your Workflow Changed?
Are you using AI tools daily?
Have they helped you move faster, or made you feel disconnected from your own code?
Top comments (10)
I know it isn't on topic. But it was mentioned in the post, so I'm going to indulge in a tangent.
I have the feeling ORMs are becoming more of a pain than a help. ORM is good if you only use a SQL database. Once you are using a column database or a graph database or a key value store most of the ORM functionality becomes useless or limiting.
Even with SQL databases ORMs are a bit of a problem. I recently commented on a post where the author wanted to return personal_details.name or users.name when name was not in personal_details.
In SQL you can use
COALESCE, but no ORM has that as part of their feature set AFAIK.And that isn't even that complex of a query.
Indeed, ORMs are ultimately reductionists, using some subset of what may be possible. This is especially true of ORMs meant to be compatible with multiple sql backends, where basically you have a least common denominator subset of what may have been possible in sql directly.
I’m a huge supporter of AI — and it doesn’t help that I could probably minor in debate and theory, too 🤣. Honestly, the entire reason I started posting here was because I got tired of saying the same thing every time the “AI doesn’t really work” crowd showed up (spoiler: of course not, if you didn’t set it up).
Or the chef’s kiss classic: “I code 10k+ lines every day straight to prod.” (Let’s all hope that’s creative writing, because... yikes.)
From “just pick the cheapest model” to “just prompt it, the rest is handled,” my brain just goes full knee-jerk fact-checker mode. Somewhere, somehow, I’m correcting something. 😆
These days? If somebody needs it, I’ve probably already written it down. If not — give me a week.
So yeah… it’s refreshing to see a post that just gets it. 🙌
If Knuth had been fully honest when he wrote "the art of programming" he would have subtitled it "the lazy art" ;). I feel Stroustrup wrote C++ simply to avoid having to remember to write close and free! And now, we have finally reached the pinnacle of lazy, where software writes for you!
This is such a grounded take. You’re not just praising AI tools you’re showing how they fit into real engineering work without replacing the thinking that matters. The shift toward abstraction is natural, but your reminder to stay curious and critical is spot-on. It’s not about typing less it’s about thinking better.
Nailed it..lazy is just efficient with better PR..
This really resonates with me. AI coding assistants like Copilot have definitely made me “lazy” too, but it’s the kind of lazy that lets me focus on the tricky, creative parts of development instead of tedious boilerplate. At ARCQ AI, we see AI as a powerful tool to boost productivity without replacing the human insight that drives great engineering. The key is staying sharp and questioning AI’s suggestions, especially when things don’t work as expected. Embracing this new workflow means working smarter, not harder, and that’s a win for everyone.
AI isn’t making us lazy.. it’s making us strategic..
Without AI, I wouldn't be able to learn and develop my app.
At this point, I'm still very much in favor of AI.