That thing about 'you had to do more thinking up front, so you wrote better code' is total nonsense. It's not total nonsense. However, people take it too far.

That thing about 'you had to do more thinking up front, so you wrote better code' is total nonsense. It's not total nonsense. However, people take it too far. The point is, does the candidate use their brain when using the tool, to use it to its full advantage? There's a big difference between programmers who: - Just mindlessly step through the debugger - Do some groundwork so they know where to step - Has devious tricks, like writing a "tripwire" to activate a special debugging version, and has the program find the bug. So I find people who have this bias against debuggers just silly. It's not the tool that's the deciding factor. It's the programmer! The same goes for writing new code and refactoring existing code. Does the programmer exercise their brain to utilize the tool to its fullest extent? The same even goes for prompt engineering and otherwise leveraging AI. One shouldn't just stop at the surface level of analysis. Look for underlying principles. Try to get to first principles!