AI dependency silently erodes the code comprehension and debugging skills of junior/mid engineers

Summary

Early-career engineers increasingly ship features by leaning on AI assistants (Cursor, Copilot, Claude) without ever building the mental model of the code they're producing. On large codebases they can no longer fully read what the AI wrote, so they simply 'trust' its understanding of the codebase. The result is engineers who are fast at shipping but cannot debug, maintain, or reason about the code when it breaks — and increasing scientific evidence that heavy AI use reduces critical thinking. Existing tools have no mechanism to teach understanding; AI assistants deliberately abstract the reasoning away, and there is no product that forces the developer through the discovery and reasoning steps that actually build durable skill. Engineers themselves describe feeling 'lost', 'dependent', and worried about becoming 'good at shipping code without becoming a better engineer.' The industry is quietly building a pipeline of developers who can prompt but not engineer, and nothing addresses the root cause.