5 ms·

> I'm hearing from Senior devs all over thought, that Junior developers are just garbage at it. They product slow, insecure, or just outright awful code with it

> I'm hearing from Senior devs all over thought, that Junior developers are just garbage at it. They product slow, insecure, or just outright awful code with it, and then they PR the code they don't even understand. If this is the case then we better have full AI generated code within the next 10 years since those "juniors" will remain atrophied juniors forever and the old timers will be checking in with the big clock in the sky. IF we, as a field, believe that this can not possibly happen, then we are making a huge mistake leaning on a tool that requires "deep [orthogonal] experience" to operate properly.

ako 1y ago
IT education and computer science (at least part of it) will need a stronger focus on software engineering and software architecture skills to teach developers how to be in control of an AI dev tool.
- renegade-otter 1y ago
  The fastest way is via struggle. Learn to do it yourself first. Understand WHY it does not work. What's good code? What's bad code? What are conventions? There are no shortcuts - you are not an accountant just because you have a calculator.
  - ako 1y ago
    With that mindset you don't have to go to school, you could learn everything through struggle... Ideally it's a bit of both, you need theory and experience to succeed.
    - globular-toast 1y ago
      And talent.
- nosianu 1y ago
  Brains are not computers and we don't learn by being given abstract rules. We also don't learn nearly as well from class room teaching as we do from doing things IRL for a real purpose - the brain always knows the difference and that the (real, non-artificially created) stakes are low in a teaching environment. That's also the huge difference between AI and brains: AI does not work on the real world but on our communication (and even that is limited to text, missing all the nuance or face to face communication includes). The brain works based on sensor data from the real world. The communication method, language, is a very limited add-on on top of how the brain really works. We don't think in language, to do even some abstract language based thinking, e.g. when doing formal math, requires a lot of concentration and effort and still uses a lot of "under the hood" intuition. That is why even with years of learning the same curriculum we still need to make a significant effort for every single concrete example to "get everyone on the same page", creating compatible internal models under the hood. Everybody's own internal model of even simple things are slightly different, depending on what brain they brought to learning and what exactly they learned, where even things like social classroom interactions went into how the connections were formed. Only based on a huge amount of effort can we then use language to communicate in the abstract, and even then, when we leave the central corridor of ideas people will start arguing forever about definitions. No matter how the written text is the same, the internal model is different for every person. As someone who took neuroscience, I found this surprisingly well written: "The brain doesn't like to abstract unless you make it" http://howthebrainworks.science/how_the_brain_works_/the_brain_doesnt_like_to_abstract_unless_you_make_it/ http://howthebrainworks.science/how_the_brain_works_/the_bra... > This resource, prepared by members of the University of London Centre for Educational Neuroscience (CEN), gives a brief overview of how the brain works for a general audience. It is based on the most recent research. It aims to give a gist of the brain’s principles of function, covering the brain’s evolutionary origin, how it develops, and how it copes in the modern world. The best way to learn is to do things IRL that matter. School is a compromise and not really all that great. People motivated by actual need often can learn things that take years in school with middling results significantly faster and with better and deeper results.
  - ako 1y ago
    And that is the best thing about AI, it allows you to do and try so much more in the limited time you have. If you have an idea, build it with AI, test it, see where it breaks. AI is going to be a big boost for education, because it allows for so much more experimentation and hands-on.
- remram 1y ago
  Unfortunately education everywhere is getting really hurt by access to AI, both from students who are enabled to not their homework, and by teacher review/feedback being replaced by chatbots.
- plastic-enjoyer 1y ago
  In Germany, software engineer is a trade you go to trade school for three years while working in a company in parallel. I don't think that IT education and computer science in universities should have a stronger focus on SE as universities are basically a trade school for being a researcher.
  - detaro 1y ago
    While that path exists, the vast majority of developers don't go through that path.
    - plastic-enjoyer 1y ago
      Yes, but it is more of a cultural thing than anything else. Studying computer science to be a software developer* is like studying mechanical engineering to be a machine operator. * except if you are developing complicated algorithms or do numeric stuff. However, I believe that the majority of developers will never be in such a situation.
      - detaro 1y ago
        A software degree or a CS degree with a more applied focus will teach you way better than the trade schools will. It'd be nice if that weren't the case, but from all I've seen it is. So you end up in that weird spot where it would work very well for someone with a strong focus on self-learning and a company investing into their side of the training, but at that point you could almost skip the formal part completely and just start directly, assuming you have some self-taught base. Or work part-time will studying on the side, and get the more useful degree that way. Plenty places will hire promising first-year uni students.
globular-toast 1y ago
You can't atrophy if you never grew in the first place. The juniors will be stunted. It's the seniors who will become atrophied. As for whether it's a mistake, isn't that just the way of things these days? The current world is about extracting as much as you can while you're still here. Look around. Nobody is building for the future. There are a few niche groups that talk about it, but nobody is really doing it. It's just take, take, take. This just seems more of the same, but we're speeding up. We started by extracting fossil fuels deposited over millions of years, then extracting resources and technology from civilisations deposited over millennia, then from the Victorians deposited only a century or two ago, and now it's software deposited over only mere decades. Someone is going to be left holding the bag, we just hope it's not us. Meanwhile most of the population aren't even thinking about it, and most of the fraction that do think are dreaming that technology is going to save us before it's payback time.
- kundi 1y ago
  Sad, but very true observation

ako 1y ago

IT education and computer science (at least part of it) will need a stronger focus on software engineering and software architecture skills to teach developers how to be in control of an AI dev tool.

renegade-otter 1y ago
The fastest way is via struggle. Learn to do it yourself first. Understand WHY it does not work. What's good code? What's bad code? What are conventions? There are no shortcuts - you are not an accountant just because you have a calculator.
- ako 1y ago
  With that mindset you don't have to go to school, you could learn everything through struggle... Ideally it's a bit of both, you need theory and experience to succeed.
  - globular-toast 1y ago
    And talent.
nosianu 1y ago
Brains are not computers and we don't learn by being given abstract rules. We also don't learn nearly as well from class room teaching as we do from doing things IRL for a real purpose - the brain always knows the difference and that the (real, non-artificially created) stakes are low in a teaching environment. That's also the huge difference between AI and brains: AI does not work on the real world but on our communication (and even that is limited to text, missing all the nuance or face to face communication includes). The brain works based on sensor data from the real world. The communication method, language, is a very limited add-on on top of how the brain really works. We don't think in language, to do even some abstract language based thinking, e.g. when doing formal math, requires a lot of concentration and effort and still uses a lot of "under the hood" intuition. That is why even with years of learning the same curriculum we still need to make a significant effort for every single concrete example to "get everyone on the same page", creating compatible internal models under the hood. Everybody's own internal model of even simple things are slightly different, depending on what brain they brought to learning and what exactly they learned, where even things like social classroom interactions went into how the connections were formed. Only based on a huge amount of effort can we then use language to communicate in the abstract, and even then, when we leave the central corridor of ideas people will start arguing forever about definitions. No matter how the written text is the same, the internal model is different for every person. As someone who took neuroscience, I found this surprisingly well written: "The brain doesn't like to abstract unless you make it" http://howthebrainworks.science/how_the_brain_works_/the_brain_doesnt_like_to_abstract_unless_you_make_it/ http://howthebrainworks.science/how_the_brain_works_/the_bra... > This resource, prepared by members of the University of London Centre for Educational Neuroscience (CEN), gives a brief overview of how the brain works for a general audience. It is based on the most recent research. It aims to give a gist of the brain’s principles of function, covering the brain’s evolutionary origin, how it develops, and how it copes in the modern world. The best way to learn is to do things IRL that matter. School is a compromise and not really all that great. People motivated by actual need often can learn things that take years in school with middling results significantly faster and with better and deeper results.
- ako 1y ago
  And that is the best thing about AI, it allows you to do and try so much more in the limited time you have. If you have an idea, build it with AI, test it, see where it breaks. AI is going to be a big boost for education, because it allows for so much more experimentation and hands-on.
remram 1y ago
Unfortunately education everywhere is getting really hurt by access to AI, both from students who are enabled to not their homework, and by teacher review/feedback being replaced by chatbots.
plastic-enjoyer 1y ago
In Germany, software engineer is a trade you go to trade school for three years while working in a company in parallel. I don't think that IT education and computer science in universities should have a stronger focus on SE as universities are basically a trade school for being a researcher.
- detaro 1y ago
  While that path exists, the vast majority of developers don't go through that path.
  - plastic-enjoyer 1y ago
    Yes, but it is more of a cultural thing than anything else. Studying computer science to be a software developer* is like studying mechanical engineering to be a machine operator. * except if you are developing complicated algorithms or do numeric stuff. However, I believe that the majority of developers will never be in such a situation.
    - detaro 1y ago
      A software degree or a CS degree with a more applied focus will teach you way better than the trade schools will. It'd be nice if that weren't the case, but from all I've seen it is. So you end up in that weird spot where it would work very well for someone with a strong focus on self-learning and a company investing into their side of the training, but at that point you could almost skip the formal part completely and just start directly, assuming you have some self-taught base. Or work part-time will studying on the side, and get the more useful degree that way. Plenty places will hire promising first-year uni students.

globular-toast 1y ago

You can't atrophy if you never grew in the first place. The juniors will be stunted. It's the seniors who will become atrophied. As for whether it's a mistake, isn't that just the way of things these days? The current world is about extracting as much as you can while you're still here. Look around. Nobody is building for the future. There are a few niche groups that talk about it, but nobody is really doing it. It's just take, take, take. This just seems more of the same, but we're speeding up. We started by extracting fossil fuels deposited over millions of years, then extracting resources and technology from civilisations deposited over millennia, then from the Victorians deposited only a century or two ago, and now it's software deposited over only mere decades. Someone is going to be left holding the bag, we just hope it's not us. Meanwhile most of the population aren't even thinking about it, and most of the fraction that do think are dreaming that technology is going to save us before it's payback time.

kundi 1y ago
Sad, but very true observation