“Help” Doesn't Mean What it Meant

This article is a personal essay by a software engineer describing a poignant moment with a colleague. The author realizes that offering to 'help' on a project no longer means writing code or contributing hands-on, but rather reading docs, giving feedback, and writing specs for AI agents to implement. The author laments the loss of learning through doing and pairing, and questions the value of knowledge transfer when humans are no longer the ones coding. The piece explores the emotional impact of AI-driven development on engineers who learn best by building.