Coding with AI Made Me Worse (Here's How I Fixed It)

Six months ago, I could implement a binary search from memory. Today, I asked ChatGPT to write a bubble sort.

The degradation happened slowly. A function here, a regex there, "just let me check something real quick." The AI was so helpful, so fast, so always-there. Why struggle when the answer was one prompt away?

Then I tried to code without it. A simple feature for a personal project. No AI, just me and VS Code.

I stared at the screen for five minutes, trying to remember the syntax for... a for loop. I'm not kidding. I genuinely hesitated.

That's when I knew: AI had made me worse.

The Invisible Atrophy

Skills degrade without practice. Everyone knows this. But AI assistance hides the degradation because your output stays the same—or even improves.

You're shipping code faster. The AI writes clean, well-commented functions. Everything works. You feel productive.

But inside your brain, the muscles are weakening. You're not building mental models. You're not debugging through reasoning. You're prompting and accepting.

The AI becomes a crutch. And like any crutch, it feels fine until you need to walk without it.

The Specific Ways I Got Worse

I stopped remembering syntax

I used to have the standard library memorized. Now I type comments and let Copilot fill in the rest. The imports write themselves. I just accept.

I lost my debugging instinct

When something breaks, my first instinct was: paste the error into ChatGPT. Not: read the stack trace, understand the code path, form a hypothesis. The reasoning muscle atrophied.

I wrote worse documentation

Why document when the AI explains it? Except now my code exists without context, and I can't remember why I wrote it that way.

I designed systems less carefully

The AI will implement whatever I describe. So I stopped thinking through edge cases. I'd just describe the happy path and patch the holes later.

I stopped learning new things deeply

New framework? I'd have the AI scaffold it. New language? I'd prompt my way through. Surface-level understanding became the default.

The Recovery Plan

I didn't give up AI entirely. It's too useful for that. But I created rules:

1. No AI for code I haven't written myself first

If I can't write the first draft, I don't get the AI. Even if my version is worse. The point is the practice, not the output.

2. AI for review, not creation

I write the code. Then I ask AI: "What's wrong with this? How could it be better?" The AI becomes a code review partner, not a ghostwriter.

3. One AI-free session per week

One day a week, no Copilot, no ChatGPT, no Claude. Just me and the docs. It's painful. It's supposed to be.

4. Read the generated code, every time

When I do use AI-generated code, I read it line by line. I explain it to myself. If I can't explain it, I don't commit it.

5. Keep a "manual only" project

I have a side project where AI assistance is banned. It's where I stay sharp. The code is messier, the development is slower, but it's mine.

The Balanced Approach

AI isn't evil. It's a tool. Like any tool, it can be misused.

Good uses:

• Exploring unfamiliar codebases
• Generating boilerplate
• Explaining complex concepts
• Rubber-duck debugging
• Writing tests for existing code

Bad uses:

• Writing code you don't understand
• Skipping the learning process
• Replacing fundamental skills
• Avoiding the struggle

The struggle is where learning happens. AI removes the struggle. That's the trap.

What I've Regained

After three months of the recovery plan:

• I can implement algorithms from scratch again
• I debug through reasoning, not prompts
• I learn new technologies more deeply
• My code is more considered
• I actually remember what I wrote last week

I still use AI. Daily. But I use it as a collaborator, not a replacement. The distinction matters.

The Warning

If you're reading this and thinking "that's not me," ask yourself:

When was the last time you wrote a significant piece of code without AI assistance?

Could you implement a feature from scratch today, without prompting?

If the answer makes you uncomfortable, you might be where I was.

The atrophy is invisible until you need to walk without the crutch.

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Using AI? Good. Depending on it? Watch out.