cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1394707/study-reveals-how-generative-ai-is-eroding-the-development-pathway-for-software-develope
In-depth interviews with 14 junior and senior developers in Korea reveal four structural changes
cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1394707/study-reveals-how-generative-ai-is-eroding-the-development-pathway-for-software-develope
In-depth interviews with 14 junior and senior developers in Korea reveal four structural changes
After a lengthy argument with my boss, I was allowed to “only” force the AI-first model onto half of my small dev team of 8 engineers and 4 QAs. After about a year, the results are obvious: the engineers who went AI-first are now AI-fluent: they know how to prompt the model, develop agents, AI-automate workflows, and push a TON of code. Like almost an order of magnitude more code into prod. However, to say their skills have stagnated would be generous. In some cases an engineer I could count on to debug a tricky issue is completely not able to anymore. Meanwhile, the non-AI team is now essentially my code quality and bugfix team. Their PRs are small and concise, their changes are understandable, and most importantly, their skills have remained the same (and in the case of the 2 juniors, have improved).
If we hadn’t kept a few people in reserve, we’d be fucked, because there have been multiple times where an AI-first engineer has tried debugging an issue (and with big models - Astra, Fable, Opus) that either totally failed and gave up, or made things worse by introducing “fixes” that made problems elsewhere.
So this is a small sample, and YMMV, but for junior engineers in particular (who usually have the least amount of say in pushing back against bad ideas) this is – not “is going to be” – a major problem.
I can also attest to this. about 2 to 3 years ago when dev houses and startups started utilizing AI I transitioned from a contract dev to a sort of glorified code reviewer/digital janitor. I saw the writing on the wall and figured my skill at code reviewing would become valuable. In hindsight that was an understatement.
Senior devs who have completely embraced AI have stagnated or regressed in their skill set. Juniors/fresh grads are just glorified prompt monkeys. NONE of these places can fix anything that the AI agents build. None of it scales. None of it can be potentially refactored. I get contracted to try to “fix” these issues and I simply tell them it can’t be fixed. they need to start over and ACTUALLY build the thing from scratch with qualified and competent devs. the problem with that is they already laid off said devs or fired the ones that refused to utilize AI in their builds. And even if they wanted to hire those devs back either most have totally abandoned the field (obviously with good reason) or, and good for them, are asking for much higher pay to return.
So yes it’s not going to be a problem, it currently is one. Initial builds can potentially work just fine but after that good luck, everyone is collectively screwed. There’s no one coming out of school that is going to save this and the ones that could save it have said “nope, I’m done”. Myself I’m retiring by the end of this year. I’m also done. I figured I’d focus on FOSS projects but even those projects are drinking the AI Kool-Aid so I’m not going to do that. the few projects I was contributing to or helped maintain I’ve told them I’m done. I’m just not going to touch code anymore unless it’s updating my personal websites or nixos configs. that’s it. I’m out.
It is a sad situation, but those of use who still know how to actually code are going to make bank.
One can only dream haha
Means they were not senior devs to begin with, no matter how they were called by the company
I’ve been wondering whether the ideal dev team is now comprised of two factions:
Sloperators: People who are able and willing to cook their brains in order to be able to do nothing but prompt and PR.
Developers: People who don’t use AI and retain the ability to critically think, code, and review.
I think I’d catch some shit if I tried calling anyone a “sloperator”