Is Claude Making Developers Worse at Coding? Reddit Debates AI Skill Erosion
Apprehensive_Set3897 · reddit · 2026-09-22
A Reddit developer reflects on how Claude rapidly takes projects from 'no idea' to 'working implementation'—writing, explaining, debugging, and even suggesting architecture—but worries it's eroding his own problem-solving skills. He admits falling into a loop of 'something breaks → ask Claude → paste fix → move on' and doubts he could solve the same problems from scratch.
He weighs two possibilities: this is just programming's normal evolution toward deciding what to build, or we're raising a generation of developers who ship fast without understanding what's underneath. The thread asks where others draw the line between leaning on AI and retaining real coding competence.
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