“Software engineers who don’t know how to use AI coding agents will fall behind.”
No.
AI coding agents are not the hard part of building software. They’re a simple tool. You can learn to use them in a few days.
The hard part is knowing what to ask for.
Knowing whether the answer is any good.
Knowing when the code is brittle, overcomplicated, insecure, or just plain wrong.
It’s the judgement required to use them well.
That’s software engineering. And that takes decades to learn properly.
The people at risk aren’t engineers who haven’t mastered using coding agents yet.
It’s people who only know how to prompt one.