AI will build you anything you ask for. Ask for a feature, you get a feature. Ask for a “flexible, scalable, future-proof” version of it, and you get three hundred extra lines you didn’t need and can’t read.
That’s the trap nobody warns you about. The bottleneck used to be writing the code. Now the code is free. The new bottleneck is understanding what you just shipped.
We both over-engineer
I’ll admit my own habit first: I tend to over-engineer. I see a simple problem and start imagining all the ways it might grow. The AI has the exact same tendency, except it’s faster at it. Put the two of us together with no discipline and we’ll happily build a cathedral where a shed would do.
Left unchecked, you end up with a codebase full of abstractions for problems you don’t have, config for flexibility nobody asked for, and “just in case” layers that only ever cost you.
The rule
So I keep one rule, and it’s simple: don’t build what you don’t understand.
If I can’t explain what a piece of code does, and why it’s there, it doesn’t go in. Not “I’ll figure it out later.” Now. If the AI hands me something I can’t follow, I stop and ask it to walk me through it, line by line, until it actually clicks. Then I decide: keep it, simplify it, or cut it.
This sounds slow. It isn’t. It’s the thing that keeps you fast, because you’re not building a pile you’ll have to reverse-engineer the next time it breaks.
Why it matters when it’s real
This isn’t theory for me. I build apps for actual businesses now. When something breaks at 11pm, “the AI wrote it and I’m not sure how it works” is not a place you want to be standing. Code you understand is code you can fix. Code you don’t is a liability with your name on it.
Keeping systems simple is the same instinct from the other side. The simplest thing that solves the problem is almost always the right thing. Complexity is a cost you pay every single time you come back to it.
The part you still have to earn
AI made building easy. It did not make understanding easy — that part you still have to do yourself. You just have a very patient teacher now, one that will explain the same thing five different ways until you get it.
So use it. Ask the dumb questions. Read the explanation. Build only what you can hold in your head.
That’s still the job.