Just because it's work shaped doesn't make it productive
AI Assisted/Agentic programming are pretty common place at this point. The growing sentiment seems to be that if you can't find some sort of benefit in your workflow, it's more of a skill issue than a problem with the tools. Whether you believe this to be true is really up to you, what is clear is that it's becoming more of an expectation than an option for many engineers.
I think AI/Agent tools come with a lot of gains however those don't come for free. Agent led development is showing foreseeable (and increasingly well documented) costs that developers promoting the hype cycle continue to ignore -
- Poor/weakened skill acquisition - Particularly in junior talent that we should be cultivating
- Skill atrophy - Particularly in more senior engineers, when you don't use a skill you lose it. I wrote more on this recently.
- Comprehension debt - Engineers are supposed to be reviewing code but many aren't. Things slip through the cracks. Systems change at a pace that teams cannot keep up with. In the end they may know what it's supposed to do, but do not why or how it works.
- System bloat - Since generating code is cheap, creating code that shouldn't exist becomes the default solution to problems.
- Insufficient quality gates - The speed at which code can be generated will always outpace the speed at which it can be reviewed. Larger PRs decrease the likelyhood that the code will be reviewed correctly. DORA associates larger PRs and increased review times with worse outcomes.
These are all subjective and apply differently to different situations, but it's unfortunate to see so many engineers willing to throw away known good fundamentals and replace them with practices that vendor lock-in their skill with a productivity heavy tail. I should be clear that there's a lot of value to be gained from using these tools, but I'm not convinced that layers and layers of AGENTS.md, SKILLS.md, with dozens of agents generating code in the background is the way to derive it.
It's extremely easy to get trapped in a cycle attempting to automate a process which ultimately ends up needing its own documented process and maintenance upkeep. Historically, simpler tools and processes have had the most staying power
That said, I'm seeing grumblings of influencers reporting on their own first hand experiences so maybe the tide is turning.
The more I use AI tools, the more I have to admit that I'm not that much more productive... I simply FEEL that much more productive. In reality, the context switching of kicking several things off wipes out my perceived productivity gains. At least in many/most cases!
— Gergely Orosz (@gergely.pragmaticengineer.com) April 3, 2026 at 10:55 AM