Professional Development – 2025 – Week 49

This article calls into question whether having AI assistants attend meetings, where the result is a textual summary, is as effective as being present (physically or virtually).
“Sending an AI agent to a meeting may rob us of one of the most impactful experiences for the human brain: focusing on ideas with other people in real time.”
“[Reading an AI summary] is similar to the way reading the cliff notes version of a novel doesn’t give us the same experience as reading the actual book. We might grasp the plot, but we miss the richness, depth, and characters that make it memorable.”
Spreading activation — thinking and processing ideas with others in real time activates certain circuits across the brain. AI tools short-circuit this process via instant summaries/answers where there’s no discussion.

In other engineering trades, designs are handed off to manufacturers. In software, the code is the design and it’s handed off to compilers and build pipelines. Testing and debugging are also design.
Software design changes continuously especially with continuous delivery.
Design is important because it allows us to lower the cost of change (driven by coupling).
We translate a mental model of how the software will work to the actual code structure.
Reading code others wrote can be challenging because we struggle to recreate their mental model.
Make your code easier for the next person and reduce coupling.
You can use a prompt to produce a working solution (designed code), but the theory isn’t in your head (only the prompt is).
Martin Fowler: “Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”
AI can take the role of the compiler. But can this scale?
Design and coding are both important skills. Humans need to form a mental model to change systems effectively.
TL;DR — get good at design without AI. Good design skills will always be needed as AI rapidly changes.

Geoff Mazeroff