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The fluency illusion — the false sense of understanding something you've only skimmed — is a well-documented cognitive trap that becomes especially dangerous when working with AI-generated code. Just as students need 'desirable difficulties' (exercises, discussions, exams) to truly internalize material, developers need friction-inducing practices like small pull requests, automated tests, and active engagement to avoid nodding along to code they haven't truly understood. LLMs can produce code faster than developers can meaningfully review it, making fluency illusion a real risk. The solution isn't to avoid AI tools but to stay actively engaged, maintain skepticism, and rely on checks and processes to catch what passive reading misses.

Illusions Of Fluency

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I’d argue that a sane developer knows that skimming through code by definition means you’re letting details and idiosyncrasies of the language and logic go unnoticed.

Perhaps we need to shift our focus from the code and focus more on the technology? A hypothetical future could be one in which the management of the dirtier, more amateurish software of smaller companies could be handled entirely via prompts.
Would that be ideal? I don’t know, but it would certainly be intriguing.