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AI is making junior devs useless

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Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#291

Post by skeledrew »

fdgg wrote: post #288
skeledrew wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that humanity has achieved happened due to the simple loop of identifying a desire/need and finding a way to satisfy it. Also known as reinforcement learning. The only thing that really differentiates humans from machines is... history. We've been learning and passing on our knowledge to successive generations over millennia. Nothing really special there; give the machines a few years to learn and see what happen…

What a ridiculous take lmao. What are your contributions again?

And what exactly is ridiculous about it?

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#292

Post by gedy »

keeda wrote: post #231

I maintain that in the future, any person wishing to learn any skill (not just coding!) will need to willingly eschew the use of AI when learning until they have "built the muscles". The literature is clear that repeated, hands-on practice is really the only way to build skills. I suspect the progression will be "No AI until intuition (whatever that is for that skill)" -> "Gradual use of AI to understand where it fal…

Proud of my son as he's doing that without any prompting (ba dump tish). When I offered Claude pass, he said "I won't learn anything that way"

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#293

Post by skeledrew »

lioeters wrote: post #138
skeledrew wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically all the problems that almost any given business needs to be solved today has already been solved umpteen times over the years. There are no new problems that can't be solved by porting and/or combining old solutions.

"Everything has already been invented." - Some 19th-century scientist who had no imagination to see the wave of technological innovation that was coming.

Iterations and remixes. That's what innovation is. That there's sometimes a huge jump doesn't change the nature of it.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#294

Post by skeledrew »

pluc wrote: post #120
skeledrew wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically all the problems that almost any given business needs to be solved today has already been solved umpteen times over the years. There are no new problems that can't be solved by porting and/or combining old solutions.

That's the literal definition of stagnation. That is not compatible with growth. Also that's not a new idea, that "everything worth inventing/exploring has already been". It's precisely what AI reinforces, and that goes against human nature (and capitalism) as that statement has historically proved.

Oh no, there will always be things that're still worth inventing/exploring. They're just very few, and a tiny subset of that few will be applicable to today's businesses.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#295

Post by fdgg »

gedy wrote: post #292
keeda wrote: post #231

I maintain that in the future, any person wishing to learn any skill (not just coding!) will need to willingly eschew the use of AI when learning until they have "built the muscles". The literature is clear that repeated, hands-on practice is really the only way to build skills. I suspect the progression will be "No AI until intuition (whatever that is for that skill)" -> "Gradual use of AI to understand where it fal…

Proud of my son as he's doing that without any prompting ( ba dump tish ). When I offered Claude pass, he said "I won't learn anything that way"

Your kid is gonna do well in life.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#296

Post by idontwantthis »

keeda wrote: post #231

I maintain that in the future, any person wishing to learn any skill (not just coding!) will need to willingly eschew the use of AI when learning until they have "built the muscles". The literature is clear that repeated, hands-on practice is really the only way to build skills. I suspect the progression will be "No AI until intuition (whatever that is for that skill)" -> "Gradual use of AI to understand where it fal…

I think it all comes down to whether you want to learn something or have something. I can have an app in a few hours just like I can listen to a song on spotify. Or I can learn to code just like I can learn to play piano.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#297

Post by forrestpitz »

BobbyJo wrote: post #45

Junior devs have always been useless. You used to give them tasks that take them a week or two even though a senior engineer could do it in a couple hours, not because you wanted them to contribute, but because you wanted them to learn to contribute. The same ethos makes sense with AI, it's just that every company is trying to avoid paying that training tax. Why turn a junior into a senior yourself if you can get the…

> Why turn a junior into a senior yourself if you can get the competition to pay for it instead.

Reminds me a bit of the quote

The manager says "what if I train them and they leave?" And the response is "what if you don't and they stay". Leaving unskilled and underdeveloped people in you organization is a recipe for disaster.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#298

Post by slopinthebag »

jmyeet wrote: post #55

It's interesting to watch industry after industry hollow itself out from the inside then inevitably die long after all the financial people, investment bankers and management consultants have all cashed their checks. Steve Jobs famously accurately called this out years ago [1]. Xerox, Boeing, PC manufacturers (who basically created the Taiwanese makers through a series of short-term outsourcing steps), etc. But there…

Yeah this industry was cooked before AI and AI will just accelerate the decay. There will still be a place for programmers who care about their craft and want to build quality systems, but the average software engineer reinventing the wheel on some product that brings little value to people (90%+ of software btw) is probably going to find themselves replaced.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#299

Post by mirawelner »

I mean just as a counterpoint:

I am a Junior dev (graduated in 2022) and I am gainfully employed at the McGowan institute, earning an okay salary, with colleagues who actively use LLMs, but there is zero talk of firing me or laying me off due of LLMs. I personally avoid LLMs for most things other than:

1) Google search which actually works 2) translating MATLAB, which I have never learned (and probably won't ever)

There is a whole team of Junior devs, and actually on Friday I got an email asking if I could refer another junior/entry level. Granted it was for a 1 year contract, but still.

I really do not get this hype.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#300

Post by array_key_first »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #278
array_key_first wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with having only seniors is that seniors have many many blindspots. Just by the nature of being there a while, they've built up hundreds of automatic processes that allow them to ignore or work around bad things at the company. In terms of code, tech, relationships, product vision, etc. It's the same reason why telling engineers to QA their own shit is a recipe for disaster. You need fresh perspectiv…

Who would better be able to see those blind spots - a junior developer with no experience or a mid level or senior developer coming in with a fresh set of eyes?

A junior, they have no baggage. Most software is unbelievably bad - almost all those seniors are come from products and companies that are horribly mismanaged, just in different ways. Or, maybe, the same way.
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