AI is making junior devs useless

Post by sam345 » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 5:34 AM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #316

nostrademons wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the same dynamic is playing out on a much larger scale with children. A child is far more helpless than a junior engineer - at least a junior engineer can feed themselves, wipe their own butt, avoid destroying the room, and generally keep themselves alive. Everybody wants to offload the cost of raising children to parents, because the economic benefits aren't realized for 25+ years yet the costs…

The answer is to remove the parents. Give birth and let the state raise the child. The parents continue to work and live childless without the costs and responsibilities. Society pays and gives this group an equal playing field.

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 5:42 AM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #316

nostrademons wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the same dynamic is playing out on a much larger scale with children. A child is far more helpless than a junior engineer - at least a junior engineer can feed themselves, wipe their own butt, avoid destroying the room, and generally keep themselves alive. Everybody wants to offload the cost of raising children to parents, because the economic benefits aren't realized for 25+ years yet the costs…

The answer is to remove the parents. Give birth and let the state raise the child. The parents continue to work and live childless without the costs and responsibilities. Society pays and gives this group an equal playing field.

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 6:02 AM UTC

polynomial wrote: post #314

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for one reason and one reason alone - to trade 40 hours of labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter. The company is not going to give me money for “caring about society”. They are going to give me money to meet my quarterly goals to help them meet their profit goals for the company and in a former life , to make them look good for the public market pre-IPO and at another company for an acqui…

TBF those RSUs come in handy on cold winter nights when you need tinder.

Post by somenameforme » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 6:10 AM UTC

skeledrew wrote: post #324

somenameforme wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reinforcement learning requires a well defined goal and a well defined way to quantitatively measure progress along that goal. In reality these don't exist without a hand of God guiding you. In the case of machine learning that hand of God is our own. Even given infinite processing power, you could not construct a reinforcement learning system that would mimic humanity's progress - it simply is a nonstarter due to th…

Conceptually, it's really not as hard as you make it seem. There are layers, but once you peel them away there's only one thing left, which all living things share: the drive to survive (maintain internal state parameters within a certain range by accessing nutrition, protection from environmental elements, security from other survival-seeking entities, reproduction to pass on genes, etc). No need to bring God/gods i…

Post by BobbyJo » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 6:30 AM UTC

heresie-dabord wrote: post #82

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…

> Junior devs have always been useless. You used to give them tasks [...] not because you wanted them to contribute, but because you wanted them to learn to contribute. Junior devs are by your own explanation not useless . They are the most important human investment in your project.