AI creates a fundamental identity crisis for developers by eroding their sense of agency, understanding, and satisfaction in their work.

11:14skills were slipping were the ones enjoying it the least. [music] And to be clear about this, wasn't like an assessment of their skills. This is just like what they believe about their own skills, right? >> I am a programmer, and a lot of what I was struggling with last year was I felt that I AI was ripping that identity away from me. And so now my workflow is

11:34essentially a conversation back and forth with a very, very smart junior dev. I to I layout like I I very intentionally try to pick something where I am still driving the work. I know what I want to accomplish. I have a pretty good idea how I want to do it. Let's start a subtask, flesh out my ideas. You go read a bunch of files and research and I'll point you to some other docs.

12:01Let's generate some architecture docs, some research docs. Let's go through the plan. I'll look at it and once I'm very sure that both both of us are on the same page about what I what I want to do. Now you go edit the files. And I actually still review most of the code myself. And so I'm very intentionally choosing a workflow that I know is not as fast

12:27as a lot of people are doing. There's a paper that came out this year that puts it simply as I've seen. AI gives you a result, but a result isn't an answer yet. It becomes one when a [music] person evaluates it and takes responsibility for it. So you can go straight from the output to shipping it, right? Or you can route that through the part where you're a person being

12:50accountable for what it actually did. >> So it's really important to be an active engager with AI, to think critically, to challenge it, to present it with your ideas, and then see if there are refinements, but to not let it do all of the work. There's a concept called neuroplasticity, right? Where essentially your brain is an efficient machine. And so if you're not using a skill, you will lose that ability over

13:16time to [music] maintain that skill. And you can think about like an instrument that you learned in middle school and you haven't picked it up in 15 years, right? >> You may remember some of the basics, but a lot of the like more advanced skills that maybe you had attained are not there anymore. So, over time you do lose those skills. >> And the question isn't really like was

13:40every keystroke manual that I did I type in my computer every little thing? It's It's like which parts of programming keep up the understanding agency and satisfaction alive in your [music] work. And many experienced prompters know that the work gets better like when you know exactly what you're asking for and ask for it. >> So, I also really wanted to know like what separates energizing AI coding use