An interesting reality of modern software engineering. A person recently shared that after 3+ years of mostly designing systems and reviewing AI-generated code, he struggled in a coding interview — forgetting basic JavaScript syntax despite working with the underlying algorithms daily. This highlights something important. Software engineering skills evolve in layers: • Writing code • Reading and reviewing code • Designing systems • Architecting solutions As engineers grow, they often spend less time typing code and more time thinking about systems and trade-offs. But traditional interviews still heavily test syntax-level muscle memory. Neither side is entirely wrong. Coding fluency matters. But so do architecture, debugging, and system thinking. The industry is still figuring out how to fairly evaluate engineers in this new AI-assisted development era. --- If you want to learn backend development through real-world project implementations, follow me or DM me — I’ll personally guide you. 🚀 📘 Want to explore more real backend architecture breakdowns? Read here 👉 satyamparmar.blog 🎯 Want 1:1 mentorship or project guidance? Book a session 👉 topmate.io/satyam_parmar 🎥 Check out my YouTube channel: Satyverse --- #SoftwareEngineering #AICoding #DeveloperInterviews #SystemDesign #TechCareers #Programming #EngineeringLeadership #Satyverse 🚀
why are sdes still so obsessed about syntax...i think if u are able to read the code that is good enough
The mistake over here is not AI completely. It depends on person, some people just overuse it and even use for very small changes and let brain forget syntax. Before interview, must revise and prepare concepts is the key
In this AI era, situations like this will become common. Many people even use AI to crack interviews, but when they are questioned deeply, the truth comes out and they walk away. Real skills and discipline will always matter.
This happened to me too, and now I'm trying to start over from the fundamentals, starting to practice on Leetcode. I hate relying on AI because it makes me lazy and looks stupid.
You are not alone facing this problem. Disable AI plugins then practice it . I am doing same .
I got rejected for not able to do oops in js. While telling the interviewer it’s just syntactic sugar. There is no real oops.
Use it or lose it.
Very true, muscle memory can be ignored in collective hype - until we can feel its absence, Satyam Parmar! There is a saying in the IT industry (distilled from years of collective experience): "To use a Tool well, I need to know how it Works." Though Vibe Coding is mostly hype and we surely do better with AI Agents nowadays, an Agent is still a Tool. At least the way we need to use it today. We cannot be lazy and pretend it's a Black Box, by any means!