AI coding tools put the top 1% so far ahead of the rest of the world. A good engineer can look at what the AI generates and immediately know if something is off. That instinct doesn't come from prompting skills. It comes from years of debugging systems, reading code written by others, and understanding why certain patterns exist in the first place. Someone who skipped that foundation doesn't have that filter. They see code that looks right, compiles fine, and passes the vibe check. The gap…