There once was a Master Programmer who wrote unstructured programs. A novice programmer, seeking to imitate him, also began to write unstructured programs. When the novice asked the Master to evaluate his progress, the Master criticized him for writing unstructured programs, saying, “What is appropriate for the Master is not appropriate for the novice. You must understand Tao before transcending structure.”
— Geoffrey James (The Tao of Programming)
Learning to program in any language is relatively easy. What is not easy is developing analytical skills to structure it properly. The solution, however, is simple: face new problems, write more code, fail, and apply what you learn to solve even more problems.
As developers gain experience, they spend more time thinking about how to solve a problem than writing code. This natural progression leads them closer to the Tao of Programming ;-), giving them the judgment needed to choose the right techniques and tools. AI is one such tool, powerful and useful when used wisely. But to use AI wisely, one must be close to the Tao.
If a novice developer relies blindly on AI instead of making the effort to find solutions themselves, they risk slowing their growth. In the end, they might have working code, but without understanding why it works. This lack of understanding can lead to massive technical debt.
However, the risks go beyond technical debt. If AI is used to generate most of the code without being fed with new ideas or creative solutions, what happens to innovation? If creativity, the force that arises from trying to solve problems, disappears, then how can AI generate solutions for challenges that don’t yet exist?
Even worse, if AI is trained using its own generated solutions, we risk entering a new paradigm: Endogamic Programming, a stagnant cycle where the knowledge base is fed only by its own outputs. Like stagnant water, this would lead to decay, limiting true progress.
Maybe I’m exaggerating, of course, but if we abandon the path of the Tao, what could go wrong?
PS: I have written and re-written this article several times until I felt it was what I wanted to express. I have use AI only to help me on the grammar and the clarity of the text. And I think that this is a legitimate use of this tool :-)
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