AI is not a senior dev. It's a toddler with StackOverflow access

Now and then, two types of AI stories hit our feeds:

🤑 “I built a full web app in 3 minutes using AI, and now I drive a Lamborghini!”
🤬 “Please help, my AI agent, wiped the entire production database!”

Same tool. Very different outcomes.

While AI can produce fast and occasionally impressive code, people seem to forget one simple truth: you are still responsible for every line of code you ship.

So if that code works, you get the glory.
If that code fails, you get the blame.

AI is not your replacement.
AI is not a senior engineer.

AI won’t attend the postmortem and explain why things went wrong.
You will.

Think of AI as an over-eager junior dev who works fast, is very helpful, but is frequently completely wrong. Amazing assistant. Terrible decision-maker.

That’s why you need to be able to do your job without AI before relying on it. Because while AI can help you build a web app fast, it can also help you create an unfixable mess just as fast.

So, how do you use AI in your project without ruining the project?
By treating AI like a tool, not an all-knowing oracle. By reviewing its output the same way you’d review code from a junior dev, and guiding it with precise instructions.

The real danger isn't AI, it's lost engineering discipline.

AI makes it easy to produce code that looks correct, but as senior engineers, we know that code is only part of the job. Understanding the system, constraints,  edge cases, trade-offs, proper abstractions, etc, that’s the job.

Relying on AI without any understanding is not engineering, it's a disaster waiting to happen.

It's not all bad. AI can be a net positive if you are willing to think.

Here’s how to use it safely:

✅ Give it constraints, not freedom
Broad prompts lead to hallucinations. Specific, scoped instructions lead to usable output.

✅ Give instructions like how you'd give a junior dev
Be explicit about requirements, inputs, outputs, and goals.

✅ Guide the solution
You should know what "good" looks like before AI generates anything.

✅ Expect errors, overconfidence, and gaps.
AI is not a source of truth. Always review, always verify.

✅ Keep your core skills sharp.
If you cannot write or debug code without AI, you cannot safely use AI.

✅ Break big problems into tiny tasks.
Generating a whole web app is cool. Debugging that app... isn’t.

A senior engineer’s value isn’t keystrokes, it’s judgment. AI is not a senior engineer; it's advanced autocomplete with opinions. Used correctly, it levels you up; used poorly, it levels your codebase.

It accelerates good engineering and amplifies bad engineering. The difference is discipline.