I’d been feeling this until quite literally yesterday, where I sort of just forced myself to not touch an AI and grappled with the problem for hours. Got myself all mixed up with trig and angles until I got a headache and decided to back off a lot of the complexity. I doubt I got everything right, I’m sure I could’ve had a solution with near identical outputs using an AI in a fraction of the time.

But I feel better for not taking the efficient way. Having to be the one to make a decision at every step of the way, choosing the constraints and where I cut my losses on accuracy, I think has taught me more about the subject than even reading literature would’ve directly stated.

I think the heart of the matter is this section in the blog:

> Yes, I blame AI for this.

> I am currently writing much more, and more complicated software than ever, yet I feel I am not growing as an engineer at all. [...] (emphasis added by me)

AI is a force multiplier for accidental complexity in the Brooks sense. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet)