We’re about to learn a painful lesson about delayed gratification in software engineering.

New data from China, 26,811 students tracked January 2023 through June 2025. Students using AI for homework saw their scores jump 20 percent. Completion time dropped nearly half. They aced the assignments.

Then exam season came. Those same students scored 20 to 40 percent worse when they couldn’t use the tool.

The homework phase is over. The exam phase is coming.

We’re doing this in software right now. Vibe coding feels incredible. Features ship fast. Nobody’s asking what happens in Month 18 when the original dev has left and nobody understands the codebase.

Commercial pilots fly with autopilot for most of every flight. They’re required to maintain manual flying proficiency regardless. If the system fails mid-air and the pilot can’t take over, people die.

Most teams using AI right now have forgotten how to fly manually. They’ve become passengers in their own systems. The autopilot flies, nobody checks instruments, and the first sign of trouble will be a breach notice or outage.

Three rules:

  1. Command the mission. Define architecture before prompting. Ambiguity kills in code and in flight. Delegate selectively. Offload mechanical work. Keep design and security reviews human. Verify everything. Audit before production.
  1. Never trust the automation without checking instruments.
  1. Quick wins feel good. Sustainable engineering feels boring. Boring keeps systems standing.

Organisations surviving the next two years won’t ship the fastest. They’ll be the ones who remember how to fly without the aids.

people insisting that you actually be skilled, independently of your tools, doesn’t make them Luddites. Rather, being unable to do so makes you a phony.

  • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
    49·
    1 day ago

    The pilots absolutely can just fuck around for most of the flight, and even during the critical moments of takeoff and landing, the plane can do a lot of it automatically these days.

    Pilots need to actively practice flying without autopilot to keep those skills up in case the autopilot fails.

    • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      2·
      11 hours ago

      I watch a lot of airplane youtube, and this just seems to be wrong. During critical phases of flight, i.e landing and descending, the pilots have a high workload even with the autopilot. They are directing the autopilot ( which isn’t obvious how to do), they’re communicating, navigating, etc.

      Flight crews of the 20th century sometimes had crews of 3 or 4 people to handle all the tasks that are more automated these days. We don’t have dedicated flight engineers or navigators any more – the pilots do these jobs now too.

      During the cruise phase of flight, yes the pilots have a lower workload because of the autopilot. But on lots of flights, there might not be much of a cruise at all – they climb, and then descend.

      I don’t know how much commercial pilots are required to hand fly the plane, but it is a high workload even with the automation – the automation just helps them do a better job.

    • fake@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      16·
      1 day ago

      the plane can do a lot of it automatically these days.

      It can but nobody is out there flying CAT IIIc autoland approaches because its ‘easier’.