Comment by YZF

I wrote tens of thousands of lines of code before Google and SO.

I also enjoy using AI. It makes it easier to get mundane work done quickly. Junior devs who never get tired is a great analogy. It's a force multiplier and for people with limited time (meetings, people management, planning etc.) they enable doing a lot in limited time. I can relate to more junior people being worried and/or some senior people concerns of quality though. I get a task done, review it, get another task done. I won't let it build something large on auto-pilot.

One thing that should be noted is that life was simpler back then. You could know the syntax of C or Pascal. You knew all the DOS calls or the standard libraries. You knew BIOS and the PC architecture. I still used reference manuals to look up some details I didn't have in my head.

Today software stacks tend to be a lot more complicated.