Executive TL;DR:

• The West is losing its ability to code due to over-reliance on AI.
• Short-term cost cutting is leading to a loss of tacit knowledge and declining productivity.
• Decision-makers are misunderstanding the importance of human experience in coding.

The Internet’s Verdict: 70% Hyped, 30% Skeptical

Coding Crisis

The West is facing a coding crisis. The problem is not AI itself, but a management pattern of removing people and organizational slack because they don’t generate immediate profit.

The real issue, in my view, is not AI itself. The problem is a management pattern: removing people and organizational slack because they don’t generate immediate profit, and then expecting the knowledge to still be there when it’s needed.

Loss of Tacit Knowledge

This pattern leads to a loss of tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge comes from direct experience with real systems over time. If you remove the people and the learning pipeline, that knowledge does not stay in the organization. It disappears.

Automation is not the same as judgment. Without people who have actually worked with the system, you end up with a loss of tacit knowledge—and eventually, declining productivity.

People are not perfect. They can make mistakes, but they can also learn from them. AI code generators can produce plausible content which is partly wrong. Then humans try to find their errors. This is not fun. It has no flow.

AI code generators are trolls. They confidently plausible content which is partly wrong. Then humans try to find their errors.

Focus Keyword: Coding Crisis