Productive struggle vs AI slop is quite the topic these days. On one hand we have to do the hard, boring, frustrating work. Do it long enough to learn the whole lot, reshape skills, gain confidence. Opposition of escaping to quick fixes with or without AI. When used in conjuction with AI, we should still keep the struggle but without the pointless friction. That way more energy and cognitive power goes into craft and progress, long-term growth… instead of refactoring some legacy code and working over things that should not be that hard in the first place. What is productive struggle? Productive struggle is the time and space where a…