3 ms·

On the junior developer question: A humble way for devs to look at this, is that in the new LLM era we are all juniors now. A new entrant with a good attitude

On the junior developer question: A humble way for devs to look at this, is that in the new LLM era we are all juniors now. A new entrant with a good attitude, curiosity and interest in learning the traditional "meta" of coding (version control, specs, testing etc) and a cutting-edge, first-rate grasp of using LLMs to assist their craft (as recommended in the article) will likely be more useful in a couple of years than a "senior" dragging their heels or dismissing LLMs as hype. We aren't in coding Kansas anymore, junior and senior will not be so easily mapped to legacy development roles.

snovv_crash 10mo ago
Sorry but no. Software engineering is too high dimensional such that there is no rulebook for doing it the way there is for building a bridge. You need to develop taste, much like high level Go players do. This is even more critical as LLMs start to spit out code at an ever higher rate allowing entropy to accumulate much faster and letting unskilled people paint themselves into corners. I think of it a bit like ebike speed limits. Previously to go above 25mph on a 2-wheeled transport you needed a lot of time training on a bicycle, which gave you the skills, or you needed your motorcycle licence, which required you to pass a test. Now people can jump straight on a Surron and hare off at 40mph with no handling skills and no license. Of course this leads to more accidents. Not to say LLMs can't solve this eventually, RL approaches look very strong and maybe some kind of self-play can be introduced like AlphaZero. But we aren't there yet, that's for sure.
- mellosouls 10mo ago
  I don't think that conflicts with what I said but perhaps counters with something I didn't; your ebike analogy implies a recklessness that the junior with the attributes I mentioned will be averse to. Conversely the senior with the full grasp of LLMs and the "taste" and judgement will naturally be ahead. But the comparison I made was between the junior with a good attitude and expert grasp on LLMs, and the stick-in-the-mud/disinterested "senior". Those are where the senior and junior roles will be more ambiguous in demarcation as time moves forward.

snovv_crash 10mo ago

Sorry but no. Software engineering is too high dimensional such that there is no rulebook for doing it the way there is for building a bridge. You need to develop taste, much like high level Go players do. This is even more critical as LLMs start to spit out code at an ever higher rate allowing entropy to accumulate much faster and letting unskilled people paint themselves into corners. I think of it a bit like ebike speed limits. Previously to go above 25mph on a 2-wheeled transport you needed a lot of time training on a bicycle, which gave you the skills, or you needed your motorcycle licence, which required you to pass a test. Now people can jump straight on a Surron and hare off at 40mph with no handling skills and no license. Of course this leads to more accidents. Not to say LLMs can't solve this eventually, RL approaches look very strong and maybe some kind of self-play can be introduced like AlphaZero. But we aren't there yet, that's for sure.

mellosouls 10mo ago
I don't think that conflicts with what I said but perhaps counters with something I didn't; your ebike analogy implies a recklessness that the junior with the attributes I mentioned will be averse to. Conversely the senior with the full grasp of LLMs and the "taste" and judgement will naturally be ahead. But the comparison I made was between the junior with a good attitude and expert grasp on LLMs, and the stick-in-the-mud/disinterested "senior". Those are where the senior and junior roles will be more ambiguous in demarcation as time moves forward.