Autocomplete Is Making You Dumber. Here’s Why That Matters.
In the 1980s, programmers had no autocomplete, no Stack Overflow, no AI assistants. They debugged by comparing characters against printed manuals, chasing bugs caused by a “1” that looked like an “l.” That friction wasn’t inefficiency — it was the forge that built deep, structural understanding of how machines actually think. Modern tools make us faster, but every removed obstacle also removes the pressure that forces comprehension. The question isn’t whether we’re more productive now. The question is whether productivity without understanding is real progress.