The engineer AI can't replace

AI slop — code that works today but quietly degrades a codebase over time — is framed as a taste problem, not an AI problem. Developer taste is defined as the judgment to know what the right solution looks like before writing a single line of code. The post contrasts engineers who use AI to guess at solutions versus those who use it to iterate toward solutions they already understand. Practical techniques for developing taste include outside-in testing, small single-purpose commits, reading your own PRs as a reviewer, going to primary sources, defining data structures yourself before letting AI fill in bodies, and reviewing more code than you write. The career implication is that engineers who treat AI as a typing shortcut are becoming fungible, while those with strong judgment are becoming high-leverage orchestrators.