When should I trust AI's code, and when should I check it myself?
You did not lose your judgment because a machine got good at writing code. You lost it because no one ever made you practice deciding. Before, you had to understand every line, because you wrote every line. Now you can skip that, and skipping feels like speed. It is not speed. It is debt, and it comes due at the worst moment. Notice what you actually do. Either you accept whatever the tool gives you, because checking feels slow and you want to trust it. Or you reject it on principle, because trusting feels like weakness and you want to be careful. Neither is a decision. Both are habits dressed up as positions. The fix is not to pick a side — all-in or all-out. It is to build one standard you apply every time: what is this code for, what happens if it is wrong, and do I understand it well enough to say so. That standard is within your control. Your feelings about AI are not the point. Your judgment is.
Trust it where a mistake costs you an hour. Distrust it where a mistake costs you a week, or costs someone else their work. The question is never 'is AI good enough' — it is 'do I still understand what it wrote well enough to catch its errors.' If you don't, you're not using a tool. You're hoping.
What changes unlock by starting
- A working rule you apply the same way every time, instead of deciding from mood
- Less wasted time re-checking everything, because you check the right things
- Fewer costly surprises from code you accepted without understanding
- A clear sense of which parts of your skill you're still responsible for keeping sharp