tzlee.com/blog

Tag: Software Development

  • AI is replacing us because we’re getting lazier

    There are articles all over the Internet suggesting that AI will likely overtake humans because of its superior intelligence. But as an Adjunct Lecturer teaching the next generation of our workforce, I see a very different, more troubling picture. In fact, I’m very, very concerned.

    AI is not replacing people because it’s too smart – it is replacing them because too many (young) people are getting (very) lazy.

    Struggles Cultivate Deep Thinking

    We’ve entered an era where students and professionals alike can summon AI to write essays, generate code, answer technical questions, and even prepare reports with minimal input. I’m not even gonna lie about myself using ChatGPT to assist in writing this article – these tools are undeniably useful.

    But instead of being used to deepen understanding or accelerate learning, AI tools are too often being used to bypass the thinking process altogether.

    In my classes, I’ve noticed a sharp decline in students’ ability to reason through a problem. When presented with a coding exercise or a systems design question, many instinctively turn to ChatGPT or similar tools not as a partner, but as a crutch. They copy, paste, submit, and move on.

    The troubling part isn’t the use of AI. I advocate for responsible use of tools. The problem is the mindset shift. Students no longer struggle with problems; they are outsourcing the struggle. And in doing so, they’re missing the critical phase where actual learning occurs.

    A Systemic Problem

    This habit of mental offloading isn’t just a student issue. It’s a consequence of how we design our assessments, our learning environments, and our expectations.

    Many computer science courses today rely heavily on coursework and take-home assignments, which were great in the past – but today are easily completed with AI assistance. If we’re assessing output without scrutinising the process, we’re inviting this behaviour. We’re telling students: “We care that it’s done, not how you did it.”

    So naturally, they’ll take the fastest (aheem, laziest) route!

    Rethinking Assessment in the Age of AI

    We need to rethink how we teach and assess in AI-enabled classrooms. Here are a few ideas that I believe must become mainstream, especially in coding and technical disciplines:

    1 – Reverting to Closed-Book Assessments

    We need to bring back exam-style assessments. Closed-book exams and practical coding tests can help differentiate between those who’ve genuinely understood material and those who’ve coasted on generated output.

    2 – Live Presentations and Walkthroughs

    More emphasis should be placed on students explaining their thought process aloud – through live code reviews, technical walkthroughs, or project demos. If they can’t articulate why they chose a certain algorithm or how they structured your app, they probably didn’t understand it.

    3 – Practice Testing and Distributed Practice

    Rather than one or two big assignments, we need more frequent, lower-stakes practice tests spread out over time. This supports long-term retention and builds foundational understanding. Students should be repeatedly exposed to problems in slightly varied forms to encourage generalisation of concepts.

    However, it is also important to bear in mind that this also places more workload on teachers.

    4 – Focus on Problem Formulation

    We should assess the ability to ask good questions, define the problem clearly, and justify trade-offs. These are skills AI tools are unable to do without human assistance, and are also skills that remain essential in professional engineering environments.

    Laziness is Human Nature

    AI encourages the human tendency to avoid the hard work of thinking. If we’re not careful, we’re going to raise a generation of engineers who can prompt tools but can’t think critically, debug effectively, or innovate independently.

    The most valuable engineers, designers, and analysts in the future will not be those who blindly use AI, but those who know when to trust it, when to doubt it, and how to surpass it.

  • How AI will transform Learning and Hiring in Software Development

    How AI will transform Learning and Hiring in Software Development

    The era of Google

    I remember my time as a student back in 1999: a new search engine, Google, was starting to edge out AltaVista and Yahoo — both of which dominated the Internet search landscape throughout the 90s. It was an exciting time for Computer Engineering, as open-source software like Linux was gaining traction in Enterprises. Microsoft and the Java ecosystem were also equipping us with powerful IDEs like Visual Studio, JBuilder, and IntelliJ with features like code completion. Yet, despite these advancements, we still relied heavily on books as primary sources of information. Exams were still handwritten, even for coding: we memorised library functions and syntax, despite having access to the Internet and some fairly advanced tools.

    Our schools insisted on handwritten code and taught us programming using Notepad instead of IDEs. At the time, student laptops were underpowered, and IDEs were huge memory and CPU hogs, running painfully slow. Despite the inconvenience, students like me made every endeavour to set them up, knowing the efficiencies they offered.

    Today, this all sounds ridiculous. With modern IDEs, who would memorise hundreds of function calls or API structures? I actively work across multiple programming languages and frameworks and use countless DevOps tools and certainly can not memorise everything; perhaps it’s age, but it’s nearly impossible to keep all these details in my head.

    The rise of AI

    Twenty-five years on, the world is vastly different, but education systems still lag in adapting to technological shifts. Educators remain cautious about how AI impacts academic integrity and the assessment of written or coding assignments. While AI use isn’t necessarily discouraged, it’s also not fully encouraged; students are however already using AI, much as we once turned to Google and IDEs in place of traditional textbooks.

    For Software Development, AI coding assistants are here to stay, yet they’re unlikely to replace Software Developers soon — especially those who leverage AI-enabled tools. There are stories of startups built by non-technical founders using AI-generated code, but the actual efficacy of purely AI-driven development remains unproven. 

    So, what should we teach students, and how should we evaluate professionals?

    Educational institutions and hiring managers must rethink how they assess skills in this new landscape.

    Developing Strong Fundamentals

    AI models today, especially large language models (LLMs), are not infallible. They can produce erroneous or nonsensical responses. Strong foundational knowledge enables students and professionals to evaluate AI outputs critically and refine prompts to achieve the desired results. From my experience with students using AI-generated code, those lacking fundamentals struggle to interpret the code correctly and often can’t integrate it with existing codebases. For instance, AI models can generate verbose scaffolding or unnecessary details that may disrupt the intended functionality. Without solid fundamentals, these additional complexities create confusion instead of clarity.

    Cultivating Critical Thinking

    Critical thinking is crucial for discerning when and how to use AI solutions effectively. Humans bring valuable contextual knowledge to problem-solving — something not easily available to AI. Tackling complex real-world problems often involves navigating nuances such as geographical, cultural, and political factors. As a simple example, a form with “first and last name” fields may not be culturally appropriate in some countries, especially in parts of Asia where such naming conventions are uncommon. While an AI model might “know” this in theory, it often requires a user’s insight and critical thinking to specify it in an AI prompt when generating a form.

    Mastering Communication

    Although AI can generate well-structured text, effective communication remains a uniquely human skill. Communication goes beyond words to include emotional intelligence, empathy, and cultural sensitivity. AI may one day grow up with us and learn every little bit of detail of our lives (it is a scary thought, but absolutely possible future) but it won’t easily replicate the nuances of face-to-face interactions, emotional cues, or the subtleties involved in team dynamics. Communication skills, therefore, remain vital for collaborating with others and expressing complex ideas in ways that are both clear and motivating.

    Conclusion

    As we move forward, Software Developers will still need to synthesize large amounts of information before even engaging AI. We may no longer need to memorise every technical detail or write every bit of code, but we’ll still need a robust foundation to understand, prompt, and critically evaluate AI-generated responses. AI is reshaping learning and hiring, but the fundamentals of understanding, thinking critically, and communicating effectively will remain core competencies in software development for the foreseeable future.

    This article was also posted on Medium.com:
    https://medium.com/@detach8/how-ai-will-transform-learning-and-hiring-in-software-development-642e3d678cc5