Are Devs Becoming Lazy? The Rise of AI and the Decline of Care | _blackentropy

With the rise of AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot, software development is entering a strange new era. Coding used to be about craftsmanship, precision, and knowing your tools inside and out. Now? It’s starting to feel more like watching a machine do the heavy lifting while we just click “accept.” While these tools promise to boost productivity, they’re also giving developers an easy way to sidestep the messy details, the security checks, the… real work. So, here’s the big question: Are we witnessing a new age of "lazy" developers? Let’s break down why this might be happening.

GitHub Copilot, the so-called "AI pair programmer," generates code suggestions in real time, filling in functions, syntax, and even whole scripts based on simple prompts. But here’s the catch: Copilot-generated code can be flat-out risky. Studies have shown that about 40% of Copilot’s code suggestions are vulnerable to security issues like SQL injection and buffer overflows. When developers lean on these suggestions without scrutiny, they’re introducing bugs that could blow up in their faces (or worse, in their users' faces). This reliance can lead to a lazy habit of assuming AI-generated code is "good enough," skipping the critical thinking and problem-solving that make great developers, well, great.

In the old days, developers had to really know their stuff. Coding wasn’t just a checklist—it was a craft, and every line was written with care. Today, with AI doing the "hard" parts, there’s less incentive to learn the deeper layers of security, optimization, or best practices. Copilot’s suggestions often mirror insecure coding patterns scraped from public code repositories, meaning developers who blindly accept these suggestions are recycling bad habits. Coding now can feel like following the machine’s lead, rather than creating something from scratch. It’s easy. But is it right?

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