A Snowflake architect reflects on a year of using AI coding assistants for real projects, finding that AI has encyclopedic knowledge but lacks wisdom — the judgment formed through felt consequences and accumulated experience. Using personal anecdotes and a failed attempt to enforce Snowflake's Well-Architected Framework with AI, the author argues that the industry risks losing the junior-to-senior pipeline if AI replaces the learning process rather than enhancing it. The proposed solution: senior engineers must encode the 'why' behind architectural decisions — the real stories, not just best practices — so AI can serve as a richer teaching tool rather than a wisdom substitute.
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