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"AI is like having a very eager junior developer on your team" That's a perfect summary, in my opinion. Both junior devs and AI tools tend to write buggy and o

"AI is like having a very eager junior developer on your team" That's a perfect summary, in my opinion. Both junior devs and AI tools tend to write buggy and overly verbose code. In both cases, you have to carefully review their code before merging, which takes time away from all the senior members of the team. But for a dedicated and loyal coworker, I'm willing to sacrifice some of my productivity to help them grow, because I know they'll help me back in the future. But current AI tools cannot learn from feedback. That means with AI, I'll be reviewing the exact same beginner's mistakes every time. And that means time spent on proofreading AI output is mostly wasted.

tempodox 2y ago
> very eager junior developer Not only that, but one who is infected with terminal Dunning-Kruger syndrome. Of all the things that LLMs are great at, demonstrating a hopeless case of Dunning-Kruger has to be at the very top.
steveBK123 2y ago
It's interesting because it actually endangers the junior dev job market in the present. And in the near future the mid/senior level will have no replacements as we've under-hired juniors and therefore don't have a pipeline of 5YOE/10YOE/etc devs who have learned to stop being juniors.
- mtrovo 2y ago
  I see it the other way, assuming these tools keep on improving you will only need junior developers as there's no point on knowing more than the basics about programming to get a job done.
  - jeremyjh 2y ago
    You say this like it is incremental improvement needed, or that we can see signs of a major shift in capabilities coming. Yes, people are predicting this. People were predicting personal travel by jet pack at one point as well.
CharlieDigital 2y ago
For the most part, engineering interview processes haven't adapted to this yet. I think a lot of engineering orgs are kind of head in the sand about this shift. There is a surprising lack of focus on code reviews as part of that process. A few months back, I ran into one company (a YC company) that used code reviews as their first technical interview. Review some API code (it was missing validation, error handling, etc.), review some database code (missing indices, bad choices for ID columns, etc.), and more. I think more companies need to rethink their interview process and focus on code reviews as AI adoption increases.
shireboy 2y ago
Funny, I think it's a perfect summary, but in a positive sense. Some of the tools you can modify the prompt, or include a .md file in context to help direct it. But even without that, I don't find it a waste of time because I have lower expectations. "This just saved me 15 minutes of typing out html+css for this form, so I don't mind taking 2 minutes to review and tweak a few things."
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
john-tells-all 2y ago
I call AIs "aggressive interns". They're fantastic, very fast, and eager... but often go off the rails or get confused. And as you noted, never learn. Just the dialog with an AI I find instructive. Sometimes it suggests things I don't know. Often after 1-2-3 mediocre AI solutions I'll code up something that re-uses some AI code but has much better code that I write.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
FeepingCreature 2y ago
In my experience, you can sort of help them grow by including a markdown file like LESSONS.md in the repo. The big advantage to me is it's an unexperienced junior with approximate knowledge of every API and style on the internet. It's a super junior.
- tomp 2y ago
  > with approximate knowledge of every API and style on the internet Like economists, who have predicted 7 of the last 3 recessions, AI knows 17 out of 11 API calls!
  - hbn 2y ago
    In my experience, if I'm looking how to do something pretty standard with an API I'm unfamiliar with, it's usually correct and faster than trying to trawl through bad, build-generated documentation that would rather explain every possible argument than show a basic example. And in the case it's wrong, I will know pretty quickly and can fall back to the old methods.
  - FeepingCreature 2y ago
    A tool that gives me 17 out of 11 API calls from a vague textual description of my intent would be incredibly useful.
  - x-complexity 2y ago
    > Like economists, who have predicted 7 of the last 3 recessions, AI knows 17 out of 11 API calls! It's definitely been said before, but the fact that they're calling out these non-existent functions in the first place can tell library devs a lot about what new features could be there to take up the namespace.
- andrei_says_ 2y ago
  But also willing to make up nonexistent features or uses of said APIs.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
hiddencost 2y ago
My experience is that junior devs write most of the code at a company and senior devs spend most of their time making sure the junior devs don't break anything. Which seems to work pretty well, in my experience.
- cheeseface 2y ago
  That sounds like a horrible environment to work in. How’s your senior dev retention?
- Muromec 2y ago
  Yeah, with the catch being that junior devs then become senior devs to review the code as the accumulate feedback given by the reward function.
  - ithkuil 2y ago
    Which is something that in principle AI tools could do, i.e. learn from feedback is how they got created in the first place. However the current generation of models needs a specific form of training set that is quite different from what a human would produce through direct interaction with the model. For one it needs many more examples than a human would need. But also the form of the example is different: it must be an example of an acceptable answer. This way a model can compute how far it is from the desired outcome. Further research in how to efficiently fine tune models will make this gap narrower and perhaps senior devs will be able to efficiently give learnable feedback through their normal course of interaction
lwhi 2y ago
A good point, but unfortunately we're going to need to get used to the new paradigm. The LLM costs a minute fraction of the cost of employing a human junior developer.
IshKebab 2y ago
Well the time isn't wasted - you get code! In my experience even with the added work of checking the AI's output, overall it is faster than without coding assistants.
- freeqaz 2y ago
  I think one of OPs points is that it is more of a boost for juniors and a "tax" for seniors. The senior engineer wouldn't open a PR without cleaning up the code; the junior can't tell the difference.
DyslexicAtheist 2y ago
> But for a dedicated and loyal coworker, I'm willing to sacrifice some of my productivity probably the more we sacrifice of our own productivity the quicker they gain experience (and seniority) right? the only confusing thing that confused me personally in your statement was that they would have to be loyal. Isn't that something that one can only hope but must be proven over time. Meaning that at the time you trust that they turn out well you have no way of proving that they are "loyal" yet. Loyalty is nigh impossible to request upfront? I mean, ... you have to deserve it. And a lot can also go wrong on the way.
Muromec 2y ago
My favorite is when I gave chatgpt a serializer function that calls a bunch of "is enabled" functions and asked to implement those according to the spec, then hit enter before adding the actual spec to the prompt. And it happily wrote something. When I proceeded to add an actual spec he happily wrote something reasonable which couldn't work, because it assumed all 'is_something' functions can be used as guard statements. Ah oh.
mrwww 2y ago
The "eager junior" takes 1-2 days to come back with the solution, AI takes 3-4 seconds.
- daemin 2y ago
  Eager junior can learn and in time not be a junior. If you stop the need of having juniors you're never going to get more experienced people.
  - jack_pp 2y ago
    LLMs are advancing as well, just not from your/my direct input. Or from our direct input ( considering they learn from our own questions ) and from 100k others that are using them for their work. Juniors today can learn exponentially faster with LLMs and don't need seniors as much. Take me for example, I've been programming for 20 years, been through C, C++, C#, Python, JS, PHP but recently had to learn Angular 18 and Fastapi. Even though I knew JS and Python before hand these frameworks have ways of doing things I'm not used to so I've been fumbling with them for the first 100 hours. However when I finally installed Copilot and had a little faith in it I boosted my productivity 3-4x. Of course it didn't write everything correct, of course it used outdated angular instead of latest (which is why I was so reluctant to ask stuff for it at the start) but it still helped me a lot because it is much easier (for me) to modify some bad/outdated code and get it to where I want it than write it from scratch without the muscle memory of the new framework. So for me it's been a godsend. I expect for stuff that's not as cutting edge as new framework oddities that appeared in the last 12 months it is even more helpful and % of it being correct would be way higher so for juniors that are doing say Python coding on frameworks that have at least 3-4 years and are stable enough the seniors would need to intervene much much less in correcting the junior.
    - badsectoracula 2y ago
      > Juniors today can learn exponentially faster with LLMs and don't need seniors as much. [...] Take me for example, I've been programming for 20 years You are not a junior, you already rely on 20 years of experience. Last time i did any sort of web development was 20 ago, but i thought to try some C# (touched last time ~10 years ago) + Blazor for an idea i had and it took me a couple of days to feel comfortable and start making stuff. While i haven't written for the web in a very very long time, my experience with other tech helped a lot.
colesantiago 2y ago
"AI is like having a very eager junior developer on your team" I think this also applies to AI having an early or intermediate senior engineer on your team. So in effect it would be having less engineers and probably 1 or 2 at best senior engineers and the rest are guiding the AI senior engineer in the codebase. I didn't need to hire any senior engs for a while for my SaaS and only needed good juniors for 3 months. Everyone in the future is going have access to senior engineers building projects.
lz400 2y ago
A very eager junior developer who is supremely confident, always says yes, does trivial work in seconds but makes very critical mistakes in the difficult stuff and when you thought he was learning and improving, he forgets everything and starts from square zero again.
- smallerfish 2y ago
  > when you thought he was learning and improving, he forgets everything and starts from square zero again. I'd say it's more like: every time you start a new conversation with him, it's like his first day on the job. But also: within the span of one interaction with him, he advances from junior to senior engineer in your specific domain.
  - loco5niner 2y ago
    > he advances from junior to senior engineer in your specific domain Only if your expectation of senior engineers is that they often hallucinate and you'll constantly have to double-check their work
- hinkley 2y ago
  But at least you expect them to eventually get better. AI is more like a junior developer with anterograde amnesia.
- jansan 2y ago
  That behavior sounds like AI to me.
  - ljouhet 2y ago
    "AI is like ....". "A very eager ...". "That sounds like AI to me.". Yup
- noisy_boy 2y ago
  While capitulating at the slightest nudge and apologizing profusely.

tempodox 2y ago

> very eager junior developer Not only that, but one who is infected with terminal Dunning-Kruger syndrome. Of all the things that LLMs are great at, demonstrating a hopeless case of Dunning-Kruger has to be at the very top.

steveBK123 2y ago

It's interesting because it actually endangers the junior dev job market in the present. And in the near future the mid/senior level will have no replacements as we've under-hired juniors and therefore don't have a pipeline of 5YOE/10YOE/etc devs who have learned to stop being juniors.

mtrovo 2y ago
I see it the other way, assuming these tools keep on improving you will only need junior developers as there's no point on knowing more than the basics about programming to get a job done.
- jeremyjh 2y ago
  You say this like it is incremental improvement needed, or that we can see signs of a major shift in capabilities coming. Yes, people are predicting this. People were predicting personal travel by jet pack at one point as well.

CharlieDigital 2y ago

For the most part, engineering interview processes haven't adapted to this yet. I think a lot of engineering orgs are kind of head in the sand about this shift. There is a surprising lack of focus on code reviews as part of that process. A few months back, I ran into one company (a YC company) that used code reviews as their first technical interview. Review some API code (it was missing validation, error handling, etc.), review some database code (missing indices, bad choices for ID columns, etc.), and more. I think more companies need to rethink their interview process and focus on code reviews as AI adoption increases.

shireboy 2y ago

Funny, I think it's a perfect summary, but in a positive sense. Some of the tools you can modify the prompt, or include a .md file in context to help direct it. But even without that, I don't find it a waste of time because I have lower expectations. "This just saved me 15 minutes of typing out html+css for this form, so I don't mind taking 2 minutes to review and tweak a few things."

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

john-tells-all 2y ago

I call AIs "aggressive interns". They're fantastic, very fast, and eager... but often go off the rails or get confused. And as you noted, never learn. Just the dialog with an AI I find instructive. Sometimes it suggests things I don't know. Often after 1-2-3 mediocre AI solutions I'll code up something that re-uses some AI code but has much better code that I write.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

FeepingCreature 2y ago

In my experience, you can sort of help them grow by including a markdown file like LESSONS.md in the repo. The big advantage to me is it's an unexperienced junior with approximate knowledge of every API and style on the internet. It's a super junior.

tomp 2y ago
> with approximate knowledge of every API and style on the internet Like economists, who have predicted 7 of the last 3 recessions, AI knows 17 out of 11 API calls!
- hbn 2y ago
  In my experience, if I'm looking how to do something pretty standard with an API I'm unfamiliar with, it's usually correct and faster than trying to trawl through bad, build-generated documentation that would rather explain every possible argument than show a basic example. And in the case it's wrong, I will know pretty quickly and can fall back to the old methods.
- FeepingCreature 2y ago
  A tool that gives me 17 out of 11 API calls from a vague textual description of my intent would be incredibly useful.
- x-complexity 2y ago
  > Like economists, who have predicted 7 of the last 3 recessions, AI knows 17 out of 11 API calls! It's definitely been said before, but the fact that they're calling out these non-existent functions in the first place can tell library devs a lot about what new features could be there to take up the namespace.
andrei_says_ 2y ago
But also willing to make up nonexistent features or uses of said APIs.
soulofmischief 2y ago

hiddencost 2y ago

My experience is that junior devs write most of the code at a company and senior devs spend most of their time making sure the junior devs don't break anything. Which seems to work pretty well, in my experience.

cheeseface 2y ago
That sounds like a horrible environment to work in. How’s your senior dev retention?
Muromec 2y ago
Yeah, with the catch being that junior devs then become senior devs to review the code as the accumulate feedback given by the reward function.
- ithkuil 2y ago
  Which is something that in principle AI tools could do, i.e. learn from feedback is how they got created in the first place. However the current generation of models needs a specific form of training set that is quite different from what a human would produce through direct interaction with the model. For one it needs many more examples than a human would need. But also the form of the example is different: it must be an example of an acceptable answer. This way a model can compute how far it is from the desired outcome. Further research in how to efficiently fine tune models will make this gap narrower and perhaps senior devs will be able to efficiently give learnable feedback through their normal course of interaction

lwhi 2y ago

A good point, but unfortunately we're going to need to get used to the new paradigm. The LLM costs a minute fraction of the cost of employing a human junior developer.

IshKebab 2y ago

Well the time isn't wasted - you get code! In my experience even with the added work of checking the AI's output, overall it is faster than without coding assistants.

freeqaz 2y ago
I think one of OPs points is that it is more of a boost for juniors and a "tax" for seniors. The senior engineer wouldn't open a PR without cleaning up the code; the junior can't tell the difference.

DyslexicAtheist 2y ago

> But for a dedicated and loyal coworker, I'm willing to sacrifice some of my productivity probably the more we sacrifice of our own productivity the quicker they gain experience (and seniority) right? the only confusing thing that confused me personally in your statement was that they would have to be loyal. Isn't that something that one can only hope but must be proven over time. Meaning that at the time you trust that they turn out well you have no way of proving that they are "loyal" yet. Loyalty is nigh impossible to request upfront? I mean, ... you have to deserve it. And a lot can also go wrong on the way.

Muromec 2y ago

My favorite is when I gave chatgpt a serializer function that calls a bunch of "is enabled" functions and asked to implement those according to the spec, then hit enter before adding the actual spec to the prompt. And it happily wrote something. When I proceeded to add an actual spec he happily wrote something reasonable which couldn't work, because it assumed all 'is_something' functions can be used as guard statements. Ah oh.

mrwww 2y ago

The "eager junior" takes 1-2 days to come back with the solution, AI takes 3-4 seconds.

daemin 2y ago
Eager junior can learn and in time not be a junior. If you stop the need of having juniors you're never going to get more experienced people.
- jack_pp 2y ago
  LLMs are advancing as well, just not from your/my direct input. Or from our direct input ( considering they learn from our own questions ) and from 100k others that are using them for their work. Juniors today can learn exponentially faster with LLMs and don't need seniors as much. Take me for example, I've been programming for 20 years, been through C, C++, C#, Python, JS, PHP but recently had to learn Angular 18 and Fastapi. Even though I knew JS and Python before hand these frameworks have ways of doing things I'm not used to so I've been fumbling with them for the first 100 hours. However when I finally installed Copilot and had a little faith in it I boosted my productivity 3-4x. Of course it didn't write everything correct, of course it used outdated angular instead of latest (which is why I was so reluctant to ask stuff for it at the start) but it still helped me a lot because it is much easier (for me) to modify some bad/outdated code and get it to where I want it than write it from scratch without the muscle memory of the new framework. So for me it's been a godsend. I expect for stuff that's not as cutting edge as new framework oddities that appeared in the last 12 months it is even more helpful and % of it being correct would be way higher so for juniors that are doing say Python coding on frameworks that have at least 3-4 years and are stable enough the seniors would need to intervene much much less in correcting the junior.
  - badsectoracula 2y ago
    > Juniors today can learn exponentially faster with LLMs and don't need seniors as much. [...] Take me for example, I've been programming for 20 years You are not a junior, you already rely on 20 years of experience. Last time i did any sort of web development was 20 ago, but i thought to try some C# (touched last time ~10 years ago) + Blazor for an idea i had and it took me a couple of days to feel comfortable and start making stuff. While i haven't written for the web in a very very long time, my experience with other tech helped a lot.

colesantiago 2y ago

"AI is like having a very eager junior developer on your team" I think this also applies to AI having an early or intermediate senior engineer on your team. So in effect it would be having less engineers and probably 1 or 2 at best senior engineers and the rest are guiding the AI senior engineer in the codebase. I didn't need to hire any senior engs for a while for my SaaS and only needed good juniors for 3 months. Everyone in the future is going have access to senior engineers building projects.

lz400 2y ago

A very eager junior developer who is supremely confident, always says yes, does trivial work in seconds but makes very critical mistakes in the difficult stuff and when you thought he was learning and improving, he forgets everything and starts from square zero again.

smallerfish 2y ago
> when you thought he was learning and improving, he forgets everything and starts from square zero again. I'd say it's more like: every time you start a new conversation with him, it's like his first day on the job. But also: within the span of one interaction with him, he advances from junior to senior engineer in your specific domain.
- loco5niner 2y ago
  > he advances from junior to senior engineer in your specific domain Only if your expectation of senior engineers is that they often hallucinate and you'll constantly have to double-check their work
hinkley 2y ago
But at least you expect them to eventually get better. AI is more like a junior developer with anterograde amnesia.
jansan 2y ago
That behavior sounds like AI to me.
- ljouhet 2y ago
  "AI is like ....". "A very eager ...". "That sounds like AI to me.". Yup
noisy_boy 2y ago
While capitulating at the slightest nudge and apologizing profusely.