SMRTR ProgrammingMay 14, 2026Daily.dev

AI Didn't Make Software Engineering Easier. It Made the Hard Parts Harder.

SMRTR summary

AI tools have eliminated the repetitive 80% of engineering work, but that grunt work secretly provided cognitive recovery time. Now engineers live permanently in the hard 20% — system design, trade-offs, ambiguous debugging — and that sustained deep focus is exhausting in a way boilerplate never was. The bigger risk: junior engineers no longer build foundational skills gradually, and cognitive debt accumulates fast.

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