How to prevent skill atrophy in the age of AI-assisted coding

It’s all fun and games until your once-masterful coding skills erode due to too much reliance on vibe coding.

That’s a scenario many developers fear, at least. According to the 2026 Stack Overflow Developer survey, almost six in ten (59%) developers say they intentionally avoid AI at work or school. Losing job skills to AI was a top reason (17%) why some say they stay clear of the technology. (The survey is based on the responses from 30,903 developers from 169 countries.)

Skill drain. Fundamental skill atrophy has always been a risk for developers. For example, a software engineer who goes away on a lengthy sabbatical may see their coding skills temporarily decline. However, Cassidy Williams, senior director of developer experience at GitHub, told IT Brew that AI-induced skill atrophy is different because developers are starting to do “less tasks that they would have just done on their own before.”

“As opposed to taking a vacation from work, taking a sabbatical, taking a break, you’re still doing the same tasks, but you’re doing them with help,” Williams said. “You’re doing them with a bit more of a crutch.”

Down the drain. One sign you may be losing some of your development capabilities is being unable to answer questions about the code you produce, Williams said.

“That’s the biggest risk of all, where you end up having to defend decisions you didn’t make, and you’re trying to solve problems that you didn’t necessarily create if you rely on these tools too much,” Williams said.

Appfire CTO Ed Frederici added that companies can use certain metrics to determine if developers are staying in prime coding shape.

“If you see your defect rate go up, if you see your scalability issues begin to creep in, or your number of security incidents go up, that person’s begun to lose their ability,” Frederici said. “So, tracking not as a punitive measure, but as a measure of, ‘Are you staying sharp?’”

How to preserve your coding skills. According to Williams, the best tactic for developers who want to keep their manual coding skills intact is to keep practicing writing code.

“If you want to keep your manual skills, you can still code,” Williams said. “You can still open up VS Code or whatever editor you use and write code like that. That hasn’t gone away.”

Developers should try to avoid delegating every task to AI and, instead, try to be an active participant in code reviews, Frederici said.

“Have an oral defense of why you accepted what AI produced for you,” Frederici said. “Can you defend it intellectually as being a good technical solution? I think that keeps all those skills really relevant because you’re still exercising that muscle.”

Maintaining critical thinking skills while working alongside AI is also important when trying to conserve manual coding skills.

“If you look at someone in my role, I don’t write code on a day-to-day basis anymore for the business. I do it to stay intellectually curious, but I maintain my architecture skill set because I am critically thinking about everything we develop,” Frederici said. “I can remain relevant and up to date, even though I don’t write code on a regular basis.”