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AI is making junior devs useless

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Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#21

Post by Thanemate »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #10

As I tell my students: juniors, you must write the code https://htmx.org/essays/yes-and/ Everyone else: we must let the juniors write the code. Seniors come from juniors. If you want seniors, you must let the juniors write the code.

The issue stems from 2 things:

1) People hearing "an LLM is as smart as a junior" and actually opting for the LLM subscription price instead of hiring a junior

2) The gap between senior and junior in terms of performance has become larger, since the senior devs had their hands get dirty for years typing stuff out manually AND also tackling challenges.

This generation of junior-mid developers will have a significant portion of the "typing stuff" chopped off, and we're still pretending that this will end up being fine.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#22

Post by 52-6F-62 »

moritonal wrote: post #9

When I started my career I heard people say almost verbatim "Stack overflow is making junior devs useless", with the idea all we did was copypaste scripts over. The same people failed, and the same people who can use the tools will succeed now.

I'm not sure sure.

I worked under people who started as juniors that way but were politically savvy. Or just ruthless. And pushed their way to the top by stealing projects, lying through their teeth, and other such tactics.

They were slowing down progress because their methods involved sabotaging the progress of others because it might make their own contributions shine a little less.

They were the cause of using libraries like leftPad all through business critical code, and cutting anyone down who dared to simply question why.

These things cause ripples. The smartest and most capable staff leaves, what results is a churn of the same kind.

But hey, they get a trip to Mexico every year and burn through millions every two years. Profit any day now.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#23

Post by TacticalCoder »

slibhb wrote: post #2

I think this concern is overblown. AI is an incredible teaching tool. It's probably better for teaching/explaining than for writing code. This will make the next generation of junior devs far more effective than previous generations. Not because they're skipping the fundamentals...because they have a better grasp of the fundamentals due to back-and-forth with infinitely patient AI teachers.

> AI is an incredible teaching tool. It's probably better for teaching/explaining than for writing code.

It is but how do you teach to people who think their new profession is being a "senior prompt engineer" (with 4 months of experience) and who believe that in 12 months there won't be any programmer left?

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#24

Post by Thanemate »

slibhb wrote: post #2

I think this concern is overblown. AI is an incredible teaching tool. It's probably better for teaching/explaining than for writing code. This will make the next generation of junior devs far more effective than previous generations. Not because they're skipping the fundamentals...because they have a better grasp of the fundamentals due to back-and-forth with infinitely patient AI teachers.

>AI is an incredible teaching tool.

As a junior, my top issue is finding valuable learning material that isn't full of poor or outright wrong information.

In the best and most generous interpretation of your statement, LLM's simply removed my need to search for the information. That doesn't mean it's not of poor quality or outright wrong.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#26

Post by pluc »

I can't wait until the AI people realize that without developers' original ideas, AI has nothing new to steal from. We don't create, AI will spit out the same old concepts. What, you're gonna create the next generation of AI by training it on what the very same AI has already produced? C'mon now.

You don't get technical creativity reflexes by using AI. This is technical stagnation in the making. By cannibalizing its own sources, AI is ensuring that future generations are locked-in subscription models to do the most basic technical tasks. This is all obvious, yet we speed up every chance we get.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#27

Post by ehnto »

moritonal wrote: post #9

When I started my career I heard people say almost verbatim "Stack overflow is making junior devs useless", with the idea all we did was copypaste scripts over. The same people failed, and the same people who can use the tools will succeed now.

You definitely did see a difference between people who just copy pasted from stack overflow, and from people with good fundamentals. The uncomfortable truth though, is that the industry didn't need good coders, it needed a bucket load of basic web apps and it needed bums in seats.

I think the irony of AI is going to be that it will make the remaining software jobs properly hard again, and implementers (ex coders) will be able to succeed with even less code knowledge than before.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#28

Post by wolttam »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #10

As I tell my students: juniors, you must write the code https://htmx.org/essays/yes-and/ Everyone else: we must let the juniors write the code. Seniors come from juniors. If you want seniors, you must let the juniors write the code.

I agree with the sentiments here. But, I’m less hopeful about the presented solutions.

I think my argument against humans still needing to know how to manage complexity, is that the models will become increasingly able to manage that complexity themselves.

The only thing that backs up that argument is the rate of progress the models have made in the last 3 years (ChatGPT turned 3 just 3 months ago)

I think software people as a whole need to see that the capabilities won’t stop here, they’re going to keep growing. If you can describe it, an LLM will eventually be able to do it.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#29

Post by rco8786 »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #10

As I tell my students: juniors, you must write the code https://htmx.org/essays/yes-and/ Everyone else: we must let the juniors write the code. Seniors come from juniors. If you want seniors, you must let the juniors write the code.

> Seniors come from juniors. If you want seniors, you must let the juniors write the code

The average tenure of a person in engineering role is so short that very few employers are thinking about developing individuals anymore.

The actual way this gets approached is "If you want seniors, you must hire seniors".

I'm not sure how this plays out now. But it's easy to imagine a scenario like the COBOL writers of the last generation.

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