really good piece, sums up almost exactly where I'm at with AI currently.

cognitive debt is a real problem in my domain (embedded software) because AI simply can’t debug the symptom when the reasons for the bug aren’t in code, and a stack trace may not exist. finding the REALLY hard bugs requires in depth systems understanding and the ability to connect things you’ve seen around the codebase together - and the fix usually isn’t adding code, which means the patchwork fixes Claude likes to do only makes things worse.

that said, it’s made writing harnesses and supporting tools WAY easier and faster, and my workflow is better for it. Searching the git history for the why of things is also made way easier; helping me to reason more effectively