Coding with agents is a trap, and we all fell for it.
May 11, 2026 · 7:45 PM UTC
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You say something along the lines of “knowing parts of your codebase in depth is important”
How deep are we talking about here -
1. Knowing my codebase uses react
2. Knowing jsx, useState, useEffect etc.
3. Knowing how diffing algorithm and react fiber works under the hood.
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Can confirm (I wrote about this >1 year ago).
@Tobi, any update on this?
> technical debt accumulates when you prioritize quantity over quality
> mental debt accumulates when you prioritize output over input
every time you use “AI” to write code for you, you accumulate mental debt (you roll the prompt die until you get the desired output, rather than building the output deterministically, from a first-principles basis)
your bet is that “AI” will evolve faster than your codebase will accumulate mental debt, such that no human will ever have to have a deep understanding of the codebase and its inner workings
I promise you this: you will lose that bet (applies to any significant software project, not only to @Shopify)
and then you will be left with humans trying to deeply understand something not written by humans, or with humans having to recreate that something from scratch in way that humans can understand
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Loved the video. It nailed the atrophy risk, but I wonder if we’re underestimating the ‘new fundamentals.’
Pre-AI, I was already doing deep dives into obscure libs and perf edge cases, the friction was just high enough that it limited how often I could justify it. Now I use agents to explore them way faster, then verify manually.
As a result, my systems understanding has actually gone up on complex projects. Is the trap not agentic coding itself, but treating it as a full replacement instead of a force multiplier for curious engineers?
Curious where you draw that line on your day to day at t3.
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The skill atrophy from not coding can get pretty serious, but at least many of us spent years in the industry before AI. So even if the syntax gets rusty, the principles and the logical and analytical thinking we built up will still be there.
The real issue will be future devs and software engineers entering the field without ever having written a single line of code… they’re cooked.
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Well I wrote something on it just yesterday, seems similar but im not good in articulating my thoughts so just putting it out here:
I really believe that vibe coding has similar effects like doom scrolling on social media.
The similar dopamine loop in both cases, the inability to recall & understand what AI did & implemented.
We're seeing 'Attention Debt' & 'Agentic Fatigue' with running AI in 6 terminals producing 10k LoC per session across 10 projects in devs.
Developers are feeling tired all the time managing agents & giving up autonomy as they produces so much code at once that it's impossible for any dev to review/understand.
Our human minds aren't made for ingesting this much information at once & process it.
That's why as AI writes more code, we are relying on AI reviewing that code too & as a result, we are putting ourselves out of the whole process.
This is a disaster for aspiring & junior devs as they are getting effected the most in this overall Agentic era, because I'm one of them!
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Excellent essay + video! Wrote about some very similar observations over the weekend:
daviskeene.com/blog/the-pric…
Increasingly looking forward to a world where fewer developers feel like their abilities are starting to atrophy because of coding agents.
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I love your videos and I've been watching them for years, but from that video I've gotten a lil' sad
I felt like you were saying "I can use llms, I'm smart, you can't, you're dumb", but probably that's just my ego talking. That made me realize there's too much nuance to this topic to put it into one video
I'd love to have a conversation about this someday - I'm a bit inbetween the generations - when ChatGPT first released, I was in my 1st semester of Master's degree - and when AI first became really useful (I'd say around supermaven) I was finishing my master's degree, and by that time I already had 4 years of work experience
I think it's not that "all older devs are better and younger ones are stupid" - it's just that statistically some very small amount of devs are going to use the tools in a "correct way" whatever that means - just like you said you know 17-year olds that push the industry forward notwithstanding their age
It's interesting to me that you didn't touch the subject of people who hate AI. Maybe it's just people I know, but really I know quite a few people who just refuse to do anything with AI because it's "evil" and I believe they'll have it just as bad as the one's who mindlessly ship slop without having at least a mental map of any given project
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since when tf do we measure the quality of software or an LLM by how many LOC you spit out per day??
people with zero real tech background (or the CEOs you’re talking about) only chase the stuff that gives instant dopamine raw LOC counts, pretty UIs, whatever looks impressive on a screenshot.
even worse is when teams just ship whatever the model barfs out without reviewing a single thing.
they’ve basically made their users the QA department now lol
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In case someone is looking for the original Article (which I couldn't find here, but was in Theo's YT video description): larsfaye.com/articles/agenti…
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as someone who have focused on building, this hits home.
i've been struggling to get customers or clients to work with, and my social skills kinda suck right now.
been chasing this "slop machine" since the Cursor starter days, and haven't stopped since.
i have no fucking idea on what to focus on now.
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