PhD Student: Using Claude Code Erodes Code Intuition

NeatFox5866 · reddit · 2026-08-31

An NLP PhD student shares their experience using Claude Code for research. While the tool boosted efficiency by scaffolding, refactoring, and debugging, the student feels a loss of "mental ownership" of the codebase. Instincts for finding bugs have faded, making debugging feel like working on a stranger's repo. They seek advice from peers on maintaining deep code understanding while leveraging AI speedups.

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