Artificial Intelligence1 min read

Pair Programming With AI Agents – How to Keep Learning While You Ship

By · Published by Everything Blog

In short

As automated tools handle entry-level programming tasks, developers lose the necessary friction and mentorship that traditionally built technical judgment. At the LDX3 conference, Giordano Scalzo compared this skill decay to aviation autopilot dependency, which required mandatory manual flying after fatal accidents. Consequently, software teams are reviving human pair programming and using intentional planning routines to treat machine assistants as secondary participants.

Key points

  • Relying entirely on artificial intelligence to generate software prevents engineers from…: Relying entirely on artificial intelligence to generate software prevents engineers from effectively explaining or troubleshooting their systems when disruptions happen.
  • Automated code generation eliminates the early career failures and simple tasks that hist…: Automated code generation eliminates the early career failures and simple tasks that historically formed the foundation of developer apprenticeships.
  • Treating automated coding models as secondary participants alongside human partners helps…: Treating automated coding models as secondary participants alongside human partners helps developers maintain critical reasoning skills while delivering projects.

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When I was in Atomic Object’s Accelerator program, I paired constantly. As I moved on to smaller projects and earned more trust, pairing slowly faded out of my day-to-day, and AI agents filled the gap. Then I was asked some specific questions about code I’d recently written. The code worked, but I couldn’t explain why it worked the way it did.

Honestly, it was embarrassing. The agent had quietly gone from a tool I used after thinking something through to the place where my thinking started. I was shipping, but I wasn’t learning at the same pace I was before. The answer I keep coming back to is one I’d let fade: pair programming.

Same Output, Different Judgment

At LDX3 in New York this year, Giordano Scalzo gave a talk called “Tackling the Junior Developer Crisis in the Age of AI” that put a name to what I’d been feeling. His talk was aimed at juniors, but I’d argue it applies to all of us.

One line from Scalzo’s talk stuck with me: “Same output, different judgment.” AI makes everyone’s…

Artificial Intelligence