Yesterday, during a class on advanced machine learning models, my professor said something that stuck with me.
"The skill level of young developers is declining year after year."
Not because they're less intelligent. Not because the curriculum is worse. But because they no longer take the time to think things through by themselves before handing their tasks off to AI.
He added something even more concrete: he sees this decline firsthand in the new interns he mentors. It's not an abstract trend for him it's something he watches happen in real time, intern after intern.
At first, it sounded like a slightly jaded professor's remark, the kind of comment every generation hears ("kids these days don't know how to do anything anymore"). But the more I think about it, the more I believe he's right, and that the problem runs deeper than we'd like to admit.
