Something’s been bugging me about how new devs and I need to talk about it. We’re at this weird inflection point in software development. Every junior dev I talk to has Copilot or Claude or GPT running 24/7. They’re shipping code faster than ever. But when I dig deeper into their understanding of what they’re shipping? That’s where things get concerning. Sure, the code works, but ask why it works that way instead of another way? Crickets. Ask about edge cases? Blank stares. The foundational knowledge that used to come from struggling through problems is just… missing. We’re trading deep understanding for quick fixes, and while it feels great in the moment, we’re going to pay for this later.
From one senior dev to another, who remembers when O’Reily books were the gold standard, this, exactly this. Junior devs are junior because they don’t know how to code. The important bit is that they learn and become intermediate devs. If in another decade we’re sitting here complaining about intermediate and senior devs that don’t know how to program, then we’ll have a problem.
And let’s be honest, a certain percentage of junior devs never do learn. That’s always been the case, AI or not.
I suspect there are a lot of people who chased dollars with boot camps. They lack critical thinking skills, and don’t value curiosity and learning, which are pretty important to this field.
If they don’t know where to start and aren’t excited by figuring it out, they aren’t going to have a great time.