Something is shifting under our feet. The engineers who will thrive in the next decade are not those who know the most syntax — they are those who know how to think with AI as a collaborator, not a crutch.
I've been writing software for over a decade. I've seen Rails replace raw PHP, seen cloud replace bare-metal, seen Docker become oxygen. Each wave made some skills obsolete and elevated others. AI is not different in kind — only in magnitude.
The trap I see most engineers fall into is treating AI tools as a search engine with better formatting. The engineers I most respect treat it as a pair programmer with infinite patience and zero ego — they argue with it, test its outputs, ask it why, and push back when something smells off.
The skill is not prompting. The skill is judgment.
You still need to know what good code looks like. You still need to understand systems. AI makes the typing faster. It does not make the thinking better. That part is still on you.