Ever notice how you stopped asking "why"?
Not because you got the answers. Because asking became friction.
You're staring at your terminal. The command works. Ship it. Next ticket. Why does it work? Who cares, it works.
You've got 47 dependencies for a page with three buttons. Somewhere in your gut, a voice whispers: "this feels... wrong?"
But you've trained that voice to shut the fuck up. Because questioning is slow. Questioning doesn't ship. Questioning isn't 10x.
That npm install you run without reading? That framework you chose because the AI suggested it? That architecture you can't explain to the junior dev who just asked "why did we build it this way?"
You're not stupid. You're not lazy.
You're just further along a path than you realized.
Let me show you how we got here...
ACT 1: Bob Has Two Faces (And You're Looking At One Of Them)
Not "digital beings." Not "the new generation."
Bob.
Bob is that guy in your standup. Bob merged that PR yesterday. Bob sits three Slack channels away from you. Bob might be looking at this article right now.
Bob has two variants, and you're about to figure out which one you are.
Bob #1: Smart-But-Lazy
This Bob has scars. He remembers the jQuery wars. He's fought CSS specificity battles at 4 AM. He's read "Eloquent JavaScript" cover to cover (okay, he skimmed chapters 8-12, but he GETS it).
Smart-Lazy Bob uses AI like a power tool. He knows what he wants to build. He just doesn't want to type the boilerplate. AI is his nail gun when he already knows how to swing a hammer.
The equation works: 50 units of knowledge × AI = 500 units of output
When AI goes down? Smart-Lazy Bob grumbles, cracks his knuckles, and keeps shipping. Slower, sure. But he's not helpless.
Bob #2: Fool-Eager
This Bob learned to code in 2024. His first "hello world" was prompted into existence. He's never read a programming book. Why would he? AI explains everything!
Fool-Eager Bob ships FAST. Ten apps this month. His GitHub is a beautiful green garden of contributions. His portfolio looks STACKED.
But here's the math nobody told him:
0 units of knowledge × AI = 0 units of knowledge (disguised as 10 apps)
When AI goes down? Fool-Eager Bob doesn't work that day. He literally can't. It's like asking someone who's only ever been a passenger to suddenly drive the F1 car.
ACT 2: The Vibe-Code Delusion
Let's talk about those 10 apps Fool-Eager Bob shipped.
They EXIST. They're REAL. They're deployed on Vercel. The URLs work. Hell, people might even be using them.
But here's the question nobody asks:
What did Bob actually LEARN from building them?
Strip away the AI. Lock Claude in a box. Now ask Bob to build app #11.
Can he?
0 skill + AI = 10 apps = I learned something ✅
It feels true. It LOOKS true. His portfolio proves it, right?
The "addition" is a myth. AI doesn't ADD capabilities to you. It MULTIPLIES what's already there.
The Interview:
"Can you whiteboard this algorithm?"
Fool-Eager Bob freezes. His mind reaches for prompt syntax that isn't there. "Can I use my laptop?" he asks.
"No, just the whiteboard."
He writes something. It's wrong. He can FEEL it's wrong from the interviewer's face. But he doesn't know WHY it's wrong. He doesn't have the foundation to even debug his own thinking.
Smart-Lazy Bob might be rusty, might need a minute, but his brain still WORKS. The neural pathways are there, just need dusting off.
The Code Review:
"Why did you structure it this way?"
Fool-Eager Bob: "Um... it seemed like the right approach?"
Translation: "AI said to."
Smart-Lazy Bob: "Because we're optimizing for read performance over writes here, and this structure gives us O(1) lookups. The tradeoff is slightly more complex inserts, but based on our usage patterns, that's fine."
One Bob understands tradeoffs. The other just has code that exists.
The Junior Dev Question:
"Hey, can you help me understand why this isn't working?"
Fool-Eager Bob: sweating "Uh... did you try asking Claude?"
Smart-Lazy Bob: "Let me see... okay, you're mutating state inside a closure. Here's what's happening and why..."
One Bob can teach. The other can only redirect to the same AI crutch that made him helpless in the first place.
ACT 3: The Shadow You're Chasing
If the only skill you're sharpening is "prompting better" - you're not climbing a ladder.
You're chasing your own shadow in circles.
Think about what Fool-Eager Bob is actually getting better at:
- Describing what he wants more clearly
- Iterating on AI output faster
- Recognizing when AI hallucinates
- Refining prompts until they work
These are real skills! But they're skills for using a tool, not for doing the craft.
It's like getting REALLY good at asking a chef to cook for you. You know exactly how to describe what you want. You can tell when the dish is off. You can request modifications like a pro.
But you still can't cook.
And when the chef goes on vacation? You starve.
ACT 4: The Reckoning
Not today. Maybe not this quarter. But it's coming like compound interest on debt he forgot he owed.
The market will figure it out.
Because eventually, someone asks him to explain production breaks and he's the only one online. And he just... can't. The Slack channel waits. The customers wait. And he's typing increasingly desperate prompts into an AI that's timing out.
Or a junior dev asks for mentorship. And Fool-Eager Bob realizes with creeping horror that he can't mentor anyone because he never learned it himself.
If your core skill is "prompting better" - you're not a developer.
You're a really good customer service rep for an AI.
And when that AI has downtime? So do you.
When AI Goes Down isn't some hypothetical future apocalypse.
It's Tuesday afternoon on a production server.
You don't even need AI to go offline for Fool-Eager Bob to be fucked.
You're SSH'd into a production server fixing a critical bug.
No internet access.
Security policy.
Fool-Eager Bob literally cannot work.
He's staring at a terminal he doesn't understand, in an environment where his only skill - prompting - doesn't exist.
The company uses an internal VPN to access banking systems.
Local network only. Claude isn't there. ChatGPT isn't there. It's just you, the code, and your brain. Smart-Lazy Bob is fine. Fool-Eager Bob might as well be looking at hieroglyphics.
It's 3 PM. You hit your usage cap. You've got five more hours of work. You can't just "ask Claude" anymore. Your subscription is maxed out. The API costs are too high. Your free tier ran out mid-sprint.
What now? The codebase is 50,000 lines. The context window can't fit it. You can't just paste everything into a new chat. The AI doesn't have access to your proprietary internal frameworks.
The legacy system is written in some obscure language the AI hallucinates about. You need to explain how six interconnected services work before the AI can even begin to help.
By the time you've written that explanation, you could have fixed it yourself. Except Fool-Eager Bob doesn't know how to fix it himself. Production is down. Customers are losing money. Your boss is on the phone. The CEO is in Slack asking for updates. You don't have time to iterate through 15 AI responses.
You don't have time to prompt engineer. You need to know what's broken RIGHT NOW and fix it.
The digital Anunnaki are powerful. They can 10x your output. They can make you LOOK incredibly productive.
But they can only multiply what's there.
If what's there is zero?
Then zero is what survives.
Those 10 apps you vibe-coded? They're artifacts. Monuments. Proof that AI works.
But they're not proof that you work.
And evolution - whether biological or career-based - doesn't care about your artifacts.
It cares about what survives when the gifts from the gods disappear.
Smart-Lazy Bob survives. Slower, grumpier, but alive.
Fool-Eager Bob?
He was never really there to begin with.
Just a shadow. Chasing itself. Multiplied by infinity.
Still zero.
Top comments (1)
Well, it's not all bad. There's also Bob #3: Smart and Proactive. He assigns tasks to the AI in areas he doesn't understand, then analyzes the implementation, studies it, and learns from it.