#cognitive-debt — Public Fediverse posts

Many years agon, when I worked as a full-time software developer ("engineer"?), #TechnicalDebt was a much debated topic.

The awareness of having cut corners, of having applied quick-and-dirty fixes, and of everything piling up, and accumulating, was still there. You knew where your sloppy work resided, and that you "should" straighten things up, and how you might do it (if you only got permission, and a time slot to do it, that is).

Now we have "coders", and on top of the technical debt hidden in the code, there is a new #CognitiveDebt, the absence of conceptual understanding from their brains.

• You never understood how the "AI"-generated code actually works (or seems to work), because most lines of it never passed your gray cells, while you kept boasting of being more "productive" (when was LOC ever a positive measure, by the way?).

• You're aware that you "should" understand most of how the code works, though, because as sure as hell, bug reports will come in

• When they come in, on top of, and before your debugging work, you're now facing the task of understanding how the slop was "intended" to work. But why invest that time?

• The "fix" won't pass your gray cells either. You just write another test to reproduce the error, and prompt for as long as it takes to get the lights back to green. (Oh, you still write tests yourself, don't you?)

And if you fool yourself into thinking that an "AI" merely "assisted" you with a code snippet, or two: take a look at yourself and your effective (!) skills, after several months of having been "assisted". At your resulting habits, too. At your feeling of professional integrity.

" #AI " #SoftwareDevelopment

#Tech #Coding #AI #CognitiveDebt

Sensible advice from Ankur Sethi on how to "Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code": https://ankursethi.com/blog/prevent-cognitive-debt-by-manually-retyping-llm-generated-code/

"I might not personally be able to change the course of the entire industry, but I can at least make sure I completely understand the software I put out into the world. Anything else would be professional malpractice."

“After just “10 minutes of AI-assisted problem-solving, people who lost access to the AI performed worse and gave up more frequently than those who never used it”.

An MIT study showed that test groups who used ChatGPT had the lowest brain activity and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioural levels”. We undergo not just cognitive offloading, but cognitive surrender: we forget what was possible.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/aug/08/i-hate-what-ai-is-doing-to-the-minds-and-happiness-of-the-young-katherine-rundell-on-the-view-from-the-classroom

#ai #cognitivedebt

🚀 "Avoid the pitfall of cognitive debt by retyping code like it's 1995!" 🤖 Because nothing screams "efficient use of time" more than manually retyping machine-generated code to feel like a *real* developer. 🧠 Ah, the nostalgia of doing things the hard way for the sake of... enlightenment? 😅
https://ankursethi.com/blog/prevent-cognitive-debt-by-manually-retyping-llm-generated-code/ #cognitiveDebt #retroCoding #developerNostalgia #efficiency #pitfalls #HackerNews #ngated

Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

https://ankursethi.com/blog/prevent-cognitive-debt-by-manually-retyping-llm-generated-code/

Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49153374

#HackerNews #cognitiveDebt #LLM #codeQuality #productivity #techTips #softwareDevelopment

Earning Taste and Judgment, by @addyosmani:

https://addyosmani.com/blog/earning-judgment/?ref=frontenddogma.com

#career #ai #cognitivedebt

Agentic Code Review, by @addyosmani:

https://addyosmani.com/blog/agentic-code-review/?ref=frontenddogma.com

#aiagents #ai #codereviews #quality #productivity #processes #cognitivedebt

AI and Cognitive Delegation: The Hidden Cost of AI That Works Too Well, by (not on Mastodon or Bluesky):

https://archive.ph/97oZh?ref=frontenddogma.com

#ai #cognitivedebt

What I’m Hearing About #CognitiveDebt (So Far)

https://margaretstorey.com/blog/2026/02/18/cognitive-debt-revisited/

Software #Developers Say #AI Is Rotting Their Brains

by Emanuel Maiberg, May 13, 2026

Excerpt: "The developers I talked to found AI useful for some tasks. Several developers said that it was good for experimentation, allowing them to quickly prototype an idea or to implement something in a domain they’re unfamiliar with. One developer said it was a good information interface. Specifically, he said, the AI helped him find where on the server a certain request is handled, summarize logs, or find documentation related to code changes.

"The problem all the developers I talked to agreed on is that the more they relied on AI to code, the more the skills they’ve honed for years deteriorated. This is by now a well studied phenomenon sometimes referred to as '#CognitiveDebt' or '#CognitiveAtrophy.' The idea is that people who use AI to automate certain parts of their job lose the ability to do those tasks well, therefore #DeSkilling themselves.

" 'I had some issues where I forgot how to implement a Laravel API and it scared the shit out of me. I went to university for this, I've been a software engineer for many years now and it feels like I am back before I ever wrote a single line of code,' the software developer at a small web design firm told me.

" 'It's making me dumber for sure,' the fintech software developer told me. “It's like when we got #cellphones and stopped remembering phone numbers, but it's grown to me mentally outsourcing ‘thinking’ in general. I feel my critical thinking and ability to sit and reason about a problem or a design has degraded because the all-knowing-dalai-llama is just a question away from giving me his take. And supposedly I tell myself ill just use it for inspiration but it ends up being my only thought. It gives you the illusion of productivity and expertise but at the end of the day you are more divorced from the output you submit than before.'

" 'When I was using it for code generation, I found myself having a lot of trouble building and maintaining a #MentalModel of the code I was working with,' the software engineer at the FAANG told me. 'Another aspect is that I joined late last year and [the company’s] codebase is massive. As a new hire, part of my job is to learn how to navigate the codebase and use the established conventions, but I think the AI push really hampered my ability to do that. '"

Read more:
https://www.404media.co/software-developers-say-ai-is-rotting-their-brains/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/2vjJm

#AISucks #DumbingUsDown #BrainRot #AIBrainRot #MentalMaps #CriticalThinkingSkills #UseYourBrain #UseItOrLoseIt

🧠🤯 Ah, the internet's latest buzzword: "Cognitive Debt"—because "confusion" wasn't hip enough! 🤓 The author's noble quest to enlighten us is as clear as mud, with enough #jargon to make even the most seasoned #buzzword #bingo player weep tears of bewilderment. 🙄
https://margaretstorey.com/blog/2026/02/18/cognitive-debt-revisited/ #CognitiveDebt #Confusion #Enlightenment #HackerNews #ngated

What I'm Hearing About Cognitive Debt (So Far)

https://margaretstorey.com/blog/2026/02/18/cognitive-debt-revisited/

#HackerNews #CognitiveDebt #MentalHealth #Productivity #Awareness #Learning

Martin Fowler: Technical, Cognitive, and Intent Debt

https://martinfowler.com/fragments/2026-04-14.html

#HackerNews #MartinFowler #TechnicalDebt #CognitiveDebt #IntentDebt #SoftwareEngineering

@alastor8472.bsky.social
thank you. That is an excellent article about #claude and #CognitiveDebt. I am surprised that more people are not talking about this and no one is talking about the solution to this.

New one from Cal Newport. New research shows that using #AI increases shallow efforts while decreasing the amount of time spent on tasks that move the needle. It follows history or other productivity tools that haven't necessarily produced stronger work or a better work environment.

#AISlop #WorkSlop #CognitiveDebt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDyuJcR2GH4

#Development #Explainers
Cognitive debt · “It’s not technical debt, it’s worse.” https://ilo.im/16b227

_____
#AI #CognitiveDebt #TechDebt #Workflows #WebDev #Frontend #Backend

#Development #Analyses
How to kill the code review · What if no one has to read the code at all? https://ilo.im/16b2il

_____
#AI #Engineering #Coding #CodeReviews #CognitiveDebt #Specifications #Trust #WebDev #Frontend #Backend

Cognitive Debt: When Velocity Exceeds Comprehension

https://www.rockoder.com/beyondthecode/cognitive-debt-when-velocity-exceeds-comprehension/

#HackerNews #CognitiveDebt #VelocityExceedsComprehension #TechInsights #SoftwareDevelopment #MentalModels

#Development #Pitfalls
Rely on AI and get left behind · Who will fix code no one understands anymore? https://ilo.im/16atf5

_____
#Business #Engineering #Programming #Coding #AI #Dependencies #CognitiveDebt #WebDev #Frontend #Backend

#Development #Explorations
From technical debt to cognitive debt · “Velocity without understanding is not sustainable.” https://ilo.im/16anlc

_____
#Programming #Coding #AI #CognitiveDebt #TechDebt #Terminology #WebDev #Frontend #Backend

*It turns out that "Artificial Intelligence" is an *inherently hallucinatory technology,* and that's not the dismissive summary, that is the *initial premise* #ZeroGravityMindset #cognitivedebt #bubble

#AIagents: As #generativeAI and #agenticAI are adopted, #cognitivedebt, the accumulation of knowledge and understanding lost due to #rapiddevelopment, becomes a greater threat than #technicaldebt. This debt, residing in developers’ minds, can hinder progress and understanding of software systems. http://margaretstorey.com/blog/2026/02/09/cognitive-debt/?eicker.news #tech #media #news