It’s not in our nature to read carefully. Not when reading fiction. Not articles posted online. And not when reading code. There’s this truism in software engineering that no one reads code. Joel Spolsky famously wrote that it’s harder to read code than to write it. That’s true for anything, really. Reading is hard, but we’re in a time now with generative AI where reading has become an essential skill.
I’ve never thought reading code was harder than reading books. Reading is hard. Period. Developers have just gotten away with avoiding it for a long time. We like writing new code because writing gives us the illusion of control. Reading asks something else from us. It asks us to enter into a construction of someone else’s mind, asks us to participate as if it were our own.
That’s true in literature. It’s true in software. When I read fiction, I’m connected to ideas, thoughts, and worlds that are not my own. When I read code, I’m introduced to proofs and algorithms that enforce some program behavior or output. Reading is understanding first, but then, the implications that are less obvious there.
I think about this all the time with Flannery O’Connor. Reading her work was both seeing the South exactly as it was and seeing new possibilities. It was embrace and criticism all at once. That’s a difficult posture to hold. It can feel like holding two opposing ideas in one’s mind. That’s the posture reading generated text and code also requires.
AI generated work is often too verbose. It contains too many abstractions. It oversimplifies and overcomplicates all at the same time.
Reading is reviewing. Reading is making judgment calls. There’s a journey with using generative AI. First, be a great reader. Then shift into editor mode. Review the output. Follow its logic. Notice when the tone is wrong, when the argument is too neat, when the code works but doesn’t belong. People who care about meaning, structure, and clarity will have plenty of work to do here. If machines can generate endless text and code, then discernment matters even more. Reading matters more than ever.