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> That's partly an illusion. Try doing everything manually. After only using inline suggestions for six months a few years ago, I've noticed that my skills have gotten way worse. I became way slower. You have to constantly exercise your brain.

YMMV, but I'm not seeing this at all. You might get foggy around things like the particular syntax for some advanced features, but I'll never forget what a for loop is, how binary search works, or how to analyze time complexity. That's just not how human cognition works, assuming you had solid understanding before.

I still do puzzles like Advent of Code or problems from competitive programming from time to time because I don't want to "lose it," but even if you're doing something interesting, a lot of practical programming boils down to the digital equivalent of "file this file into this filing," mind-numbingly boring, forgettable code that still has to be written to a reasonable standard of quality because otherwise everything collapses.

[minraws]

Want to try to do anything more complicated? I have seen a lot of delusional people around, who think their skills are still on the same level, but in interviews they bomb at even simple technical topics, when practical implementations are concerned.

If you don't code ofc you won't be as good at coding, that's a practical fact. Sure, beyond a certain skill level your decline may not be noticeable early because of the years of built-in practice and knowledge.

But considering every year there is so much more interesting technology if you don't keep improving in both hands-on learning and slow down to take stock, you won't be capable of anything more than delusional thinking about how awesome your skill level is.