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AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

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Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#51

Post by zevon »

zarzavat wrote: post #26

If you search back HN history to the beginnings of AI coding in 2021 you will find people observing that AI is bad for juniors because they can't distinguish between good and bad completions. There is no surprise, it's always been this way. Edit interesting thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27678424 Edit: an example of the kind of comment I was talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27677690

This. Anecdotally, I had a student around 2021 who had some technical inclination and interest but no CS education and no programming experience. He got into using AI early and with the help of ChatGPT was able to contribute rather substantially to something we were developing at the time which would usually have been much too complex for a beginner. However, he also introduced quite a few security issues, did a lot of things in very roundabout ways, did not even consider some libraries/approaches that would have made his life much easier and more maintainable and his documentation was enthusiastic but often... slightly factually questionable and also quite roundabout.

It was quite interesting to have discussions with him after his code check-ins and I think the whole process was a good educational experience for everybody who was involved. It would not have worked this way without a combination of AI and experienced people involved.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#52

Post by lodovic »

tbrownaw wrote: post #23
johanyc wrote: post #16

> The early narrative was that companies would need fewer seniors, and juniors together with AI could produce quality code I have never heard that before

I heard that it was supposed to replace developers (no "senior" or "junior" qualifier), by letting non-technical people make things.

That's just not going to happen. Senior devs will get 5-10 times as productive, wielding an army of agents comparable to junior devs. Other people will increasingly get lost in the architecture, fundamental bugs, rewrites, agent loops, and ambiguities of software design. I have never been able to take up as much work as I currently do.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#53

Post by fxj »

zarzavat wrote: post #26

If you search back HN history to the beginnings of AI coding in 2021 you will find people observing that AI is bad for juniors because they can't distinguish between good and bad completions. There is no surprise, it's always been this way. Edit interesting thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27678424 Edit: an example of the kind of comment I was talking about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27677690

Also AI cannot draw conclusions like "from A and B follows C". You really have to point its nose into the result that you want and then it finally understands. This is especially hard for juniors because they are just learning to see the big picture. For senior who already knows more or less what they want and needs only to work out the nitty gritty details this is much easier. I dont know where the claims come from that AI is PHD level. When it comes to reasoning it is more like a 5 year old.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#54

Post by fxj »

lolive wrote: post #12

I read, ages ago, this apocryphal quote by William Gibson: “The most important skill of the 21st century is to figure out which proper keywords to type in the Google search bar, to display the proper answers.” To me, that has never been more true. Most junior dev ask GeminiPiTi to write the JavaScript code for them, whereas I ask it for explanation on the underlying model of async/await and the execution model of a J…

I agree, you need to know the "language" and the keywords of the topics that you want to work with. If you are a complete newcomer to a field then AI wont help you much. You have to tell the AI "assume I have A, B and C and now I want to do D" then it understands and tries to find a solution. It has a load of information stored but cannot make use of that information in a creative way.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#55

Post by fxj »

pagutierrezn wrote: post #22

AI is filling "narrow" gaps. In the case of seniors these are: -techs they understand but still not master. AI aids with implementation details only experts knowb about - No time for long coding tasks. It aids with fast implementations and automatic tests. - No time for learning techs that adress well understood problems. Ai helps with quick intros, fast demos and solver of learners' misunderstandings In essence, in…

In my experience AI is wikipedia/stackoverflow on steroids when I need to know something about a field I dont know much about. It has nice explanations and you can ask for examples or scenarios and it will tell you what you didnt understand.

Only when you know about the basic notions in the field you want to work with AI can be productive. This is not only valid for coding but also for other fields in science and humanities.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#56

Post by fxj »

lodovic wrote: post #52
tbrownaw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that it was supposed to replace developers (no "senior" or "junior" qualifier), by letting non-technical people make things.

That's just not going to happen. Senior devs will get 5-10 times as productive, wielding an army of agents comparable to junior devs. Other people will increasingly get lost in the architecture, fundamental bugs, rewrites, agent loops, and ambiguities of software design. I have never been able to take up as much work as I currently do.

I see it at our place that seniors get more productive but also that juniors get faster on track and more easily learn the basics that are needed and to do basic tasks like doumentation and tutorial writing. It helps both groups but it does not make a 100x coder out of a newbee or even code by itself. This was a pipe dream from the beginning and some people/companies still sell it that way.

In the end AI is a tool that helps everyone to get better but the knowledge and creativity is still in the people not in the input files of chatgpt.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#57

Post by tuatoru »

ismail wrote: post #19

learning typically follows a specific path. 1. Unconsciously incompetent 2. Consciously incompetent 3. Consciously competent 4. Unconsciously competent The challenge with AI, it will give you “good enough” output, without feedback loops you never move to 2,3,4 and assume you are doing ok. Hence it stunts learning. So juniors or inexperienced stay inexperienced, without knowing what they don’t know. You have to Use it…

Also ask it "what questions should I be asking about this topic?"

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#59

Post by lazide »

fxj wrote: post #55
pagutierrezn wrote: post #22

AI is filling "narrow" gaps. In the case of seniors these are: -techs they understand but still not master. AI aids with implementation details only experts knowb about - No time for long coding tasks. It aids with fast implementations and automatic tests. - No time for learning techs that adress well understood problems. Ai helps with quick intros, fast demos and solver of learners' misunderstandings In essence, in…

In my experience AI is wikipedia/stackoverflow on steroids when I need to know something about a field I dont know much about. It has nice explanations and you can ask for examples or scenarios and it will tell you what you didnt understand. Only when you know about the basic notions in the field you want to work with AI can be productive. This is not only valid for coding but also for other fields in science and hum…

Except stackoverflow was only occasionally hallucinating entire libraries.

Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?

#60

Post by bentt »

The best code I've written with an LLM has been where I architect it, I guide the LLM through the scaffolding and initial proofs of different components, and then I guide it through adding features. Along the way it makes mistakes and I guide it through fixing them. Then when it is slow, I profile and guide it through optimizations.

So in the end, it's code that I know very, very well. I could have written it but it would have taken me about 3x longer when all is said and done. Maybe longer. There are usually parts that have difficult functions but the inputs and outputs of those functions are testable so it doesn't matter so much that you know every detail of the implementation, as long as it is validated.

This is just not junior stuff.

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