I think perhaps my use of the word skill atrophy here is wrong.

Skill atrophy is when you're good at something, and because you don't practice it regularly, it gradually wanes over years, like when my former CEO said "I used to be good at programming" because he made a tiny chess computer and sold millions of copies, and now he... just doesn't code, and hasn't for decades.

Skill atrophy would be if I opened my text editor and I wasn't able to code after two years. Being a polyglot, there's always some language that feels rusty. And now they all do. But it hasn't been long enough to feel the atrophy.

What I'm describing is laziness to understand a problem domain.

> I couldn't imagine submitting a PR for code that I didn't understand and couldn't explain.

I could. I do it constantly for projects where that premise is acceptable. And I've worked on projects where many people merge to main once an established set of steps has completed. "How does it work?" and "Show me the thing working." are good gates. Understanding (or even reading) the code is not a mandated prerequisite.

As an Open Source contributor? No way. Exactly because I'm contributing to projects where people don't share basic premises. Some people code by hand, others use coding agents. If I were compiling stuff and everyone else was hand-writing their assembly, I'd read and tidy up my generated assembly, too.

> AI provides a great opportunity to learn at an even faster rate by using AI to help explain complex topics.

Totally. Better solutions come through those explainer sessions.