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AI is making junior devs useless

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Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#361

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

bitfilped wrote: post #352
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, I don’t want this to sound bitter. The first time I was single as an adult was from 1996-2002 and dating apps weren’t a thing. The second time I was single was from 2006-2011 and I wasn’t really trying to date and spent most of the time getting my head back in the game and just hanging out with female friends until I started dating my now wife who I met at work. Even she had to make the first move. That…

Working on yourself extends faaaaar past just going to the gym.

The only thing that matters on dating apps and first dates are first impressions

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#362

Post by ozmodiar »

shafyy wrote: post #191
ffsm8 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Birthrate dropping has multiple causes, none of them have any relation to the topic at hand It's a negative (from the perspective of reproduction) confluence of both social and economic developments. E.g. the death of the traditional gender roles has inevitably reduced birth rates - for multiple reasons to boot. Because on the one hand, the women has am easier time not to commit and just sleep around, consequentl…

Your comment is incredibly misogynist and sexist. Here's a more fact-based good summary for some potential reasons for the declining fertility rate: https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate

I am both shocked and not shocked at how many people support incel garbage reasoning here.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#363

Post by keeda »

tim333 wrote: post #346
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…

>"built the muscles" You can build muscles by digging a field by hand but most people commercially use tractors. And operating tractors is a skill but a different one. I imagine it'll go like that with AI. People will use it and learn the skill of using AI. I mean you can learn the skill the machine does if you want like learning to write machine code rather than using a compiler but there may be a limited number of…

The problem with the tractor analogy is that there is not much that can go wrong in digging with a machine versus by hand. However, AI, like people, makes non-obvious mistakes that require a high level of skill to catch.

For instance, what we're seeing with pure vibe-coding is that even the best models make small mistakes, usually in the architecture but often in even lower-level abstractions, that compound over time resulting in unmanageable complexity. Senior engineers are able to spot and fix these issues early based on intuition, but that intuition has come from a lot of hands-on experience.

Using AI for a given skill is becoming a separate skill in itself, for sure. But this still requires having an understanding of the original skill itself.

I think this requirement won't change until we have super-intelligence, where AI is consistently much better than humans, i.e. beyond AGI. Because even at human-level performance, the only human that can verify an expert's work is another expert.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#364

Post by rco8786 »

array_key_first wrote: post #271
rco8786 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Seems to be working fine for most

We have no frame of reference if it's working because basically everyone is doing it. And business only measure on extremely short timelines. Meaning, it could be good right now, and catastrophic on the 10+ year timeline. I definitely think this is the case. Almost all software is unbelievably bad. Almost all software gets worse the longer it exists. And almost all software does not meet its business purpose - it's m…

Maybe. Businesses have been approaching it this way for at least as long as I've been in the industry (16ish years) and I haven't heard of anyone going bankrupt because of a lack of institutional knowledge.

> Almost all software is unbelievably bad.

This is an opinion. And implies that software would, on average, be better if businesses made more of an effort to retain internal talent vs hire outside talent. And I think that's largely unprovable.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#365

Post by jimbokun »

keeda wrote: post #335
jimbokun wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a full proof plan to prevent students from abusing AI: Pencil and paper exams, taken in person with all electronic devices prohibited.

Haven't been able to verify, but somebody on a podcast mentioned that sales of paper and stationery have started soaring precisely because of this. Edited to add: I think this is worth trying, but not nearly sufficient. I would not be surprised if all we see is that grades plummet because until the pen-and-paper tests the students have just been winging it with AI.

Then any student who cares about his or her grades will change his or her study habits very quickly.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#367

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

tim333 wrote: post #346
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…

>"built the muscles" You can build muscles by digging a field by hand but most people commercially use tractors. And operating tractors is a skill but a different one. I imagine it'll go like that with AI. People will use it and learn the skill of using AI. I mean you can learn the skill the machine does if you want like learning to write machine code rather than using a compiler but there may be a limited number of…

And the tractor operator with weak muscles is up the creek without a paddle in any situation that comes up that the tractor can't handle. They are also toast if the tractor's own advancements in automation renders less and less relevant.

Our only value in an LLM dominated world is the ability to handle the situations that the LLMs can't. Those who let their skills and critical thinking atrophy (or never built them in the first place), well, they're simply not going to make it. Shepherding LLMs is not a difficult skill to acquire and isn't going to be enough to let us maintain our value.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#368

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

eloisant wrote: post #343
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that (hypothetical) you as a line level manager don’t control comp and raises. Even in BigTech your manager doesn’t control your promotion and everyone knows it’s better to “boomerang” because you will get paid less being promoted to an L5 (mid) from an L4 than someone hired as an L5.

Then you shouldn't say "A junior developer just isn’t worth the investment" but "my company decided not to invest in people". That might not be YOUR choice, it's still a choice being made at the company you work for.

You’re mencing words for no reason. Companies don’t care about “people”. They care about allocating capital where they see the highest return. Investing in a junior developer who will do negative work instead of a mid level developer who will do positive work once they learn the business and processes is a better investment.

You’re niavely making a moral argument as if anything about corporate America is moral.

Can you make an argument based on numbers? Every single argument I make to leadership has to have a business case

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#369

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

coldtea wrote: post #347
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again do you have any actual evidence? Citations?

Do you have actual evidence it excludes them? You're making the stronger claim. Experience says most absolutely don't jump ship every 2-3 years in the kind of companies I mentioned. Now, if you think companies are playing a rotating musical chairs game and are majority new people every 5 years, ...

Well your anecdotal experience means no more than mine across 10 companies - including startups, small to medium size “lifestyle companies” and two at the time I worked there F10 companies - GE and Amazon.

I can’t go to management - who when I was working as a tech lead pre 2020 - were CTOs, Directors, founders and at times having to talk to the PE owners without solid data.

Re: AI is making junior devs useless

#370

Post by collingreen »

ffsm8 wrote: post #345
notpachet wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, I would like to point out that almost all women have had more then 0 sexual partners before wedding. Hence your statement would actually be kinda correct of you remove the "recklessly". Having premarital sex is not everyone's definition of "promiscuous".

I agree, which itself is also contributing to falling birth rates. I think everyone in this thread is imagining me as a bitter incel being outraged by not getting the attention I supposedly deserve, which couldn't be further from the truth. I'm merely observing a lot of factors which in aggregate can unquestionably be seen as causing this. The reality is that the traditional gender roles where very positive in the co…

You keep claiming the things you're saying are unarguable and as obvious as water being wet, in a thread of folks repeatedly talking about the nuances and differences.

Birth rates going down seems to be a thing. That's about all I agree are facts here. I struggle to even meet you at "traditional gender roles" like that's some universal constant - is that Protestant America? Catholic Ireland? Is that one of the Chinese dynasties? Sub-saharan African tribal society?

I think, like most things, it's unlikely you've found the "as obvious as water being wet" single smoking gun to a broader solution.

Social pressure to marry young and breed will clearly have an effect on birth rates. I'd be surprised if anyone would disagree there, all other things being equal. It feels ridiculous to assert that is the only possible influence and even more ridiculous to assert one particular set of social norms is the only way back. I know so many people that don't fit this incredibly narrow view, including everything from "traditional" couples not wanting kids (for lots of different reasons from money to global stability to being jaded to genuinely not caring) to very very not "traditional" people who ARE having kids.

If this is worth talking about I think it's worth taking in more info than just blaming resentment over women being more empowered over their own lives (or more slutty or more undesirable or however you want to frame it).

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