Because it's a multiplier not an adder.
AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
101–110 of 481 posts
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#102Because garbage in, garbage out
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I could have written it but it would have taken me about 3x longer when all is said and done. Really does not sound like that from your description. It sounds like coaching a noob, which is a lot of work in itself. Wasn’t there a study that said that using LLMs makes people feel more productive while they actually are not?
"Really does not sound like that from your description. It sounds like coaching a noob, which is a lot of work in itself." And if this is true, you will have to coach AI each time whereas a person should advance over time.
And then they skip to another job for more money, and you start again with a new hire.
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty much, but it already starts at the prompting and context level. Senior engineers either already know exactly where the changes need to be made and can suggest what to do. They probably know the pitfalls, have established patterns, architectures and designs in their head. Juniors on the other hand don't have that, so they go with whatever. Nowadays a lot of them also "ask ChatGPT about its opinion on architectu…
I was thinking about this last week. I don't think this is necessarily a massive moat for senior programmers. I feel it's a not a massive jump to teach AI architecture patterns and good data modelling? I feel that anthropic etc al. just haven't got to that training stage yet. That then leaves you with the mental model problem. Yes, there then a large context problem, but again I was wondering if setting up an MCP tha…
Yeah, tried similar things.
The issue is that having them learn that on it's own is currently an inaccurate process with a lot of overlooking. I recently tried doing some of the techniques that fared well on smaller repositories on a giant monorepo, and while sometimes they did yield improvements, most often things got overlooked, dependencies forgot about, testing suites confused. And it wastes a ton of compute in the end for smaller yields.
It will get better, that I am sure of, but currently the best way is to introduce it an architecture, give it some samples so it can do what it does best - follow text patterns. But people are mostly trying to one-shot things with this magical AI they heard about without any proper investment of time and mindshare into it.
While some might say "oh that wont work well in legacy repositores, we got 6 architectures here", pointing that out and adding a markdown explaining each helps a ton. And not "hey claude generate me an architecture.md" but transferring the actual knowledge you have, together with all the thorny bits into documentation, which will both improve your AI usage and your organisation.
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#105So we fantasize now some claims into reality and then argue against them?
AI was never “developed to help juniors shine”…
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#106The 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…
I usually ask it to build a feature based on a specification I wrote. If it is not exactly right, it is often the case that editing it myself is faster than iterating with the ai, which has sometimes put me in an infinite loop of corrections requests. Have you encountered this too?
For me I only use it as a second opinion, I got a pretty good idea of what I want and how to do it, and I can ask any input on what I have written. This gives me the best results sofar.
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#107simple: power law.
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I could have written it but it would have taken me about 3x longer when all is said and done. Really does not sound like that from your description. It sounds like coaching a noob, which is a lot of work in itself. Wasn’t there a study that said that using LLMs makes people feel more productive while they actually are not?
"Really does not sound like that from your description. It sounds like coaching a noob, which is a lot of work in itself." And if this is true, you will have to coach AI each time whereas a person should advance over time.
At least you can ask AI to summarize a AGENT.md or something and it will read it diligently next time.
As for humans, they might not have the motivation technical writing skill to document what they learnt. And even if they did, the next person might not have the patience to actually read it.
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#109The 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…
I usually ask it to build a feature based on a specification I wrote. If it is not exactly right, it is often the case that editing it myself is faster than iterating with the ai, which has sometimes put me in an infinite loop of corrections requests. Have you encountered this too?
This only happens if you want it to one-shot stuff, or if you fall under the false belief that "it is so close, we just need to correct these three things!".
Yes I have encountered it. Narrowing focus and putting constraints and guiding it closer made the LLM agent much better at producing what I need.
It boils down to me not writing the code really. Using LLMs actually sharpened my architectural and software design skills. Made me think harder and deeper at an earlier stage.
Re: AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
#110The 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…
> I could have written it but it would have taken me about 3x longer when all is said and done. Really does not sound like that from your description. It sounds like coaching a noob, which is a lot of work in itself. Wasn’t there a study that said that using LLMs makes people feel more productive while they actually are not?
My buggy executive function frequently gets in the way of putting code to screen. You know how hacker news has that lil timeout setting to pseudo force you to disengage from it? AI made it so I don't need anything like that. It is digital Adderall.