zlacker

>>tablet+(OP)
One thing that really bothered me that the author glossed over (perhaps they don't care, given the tone of the article) is where they said:

> Does an intern cost $20/month? Because that’s what Cursor.ai costs.

> Part of being a senior developer is making less-able coders productive, be they fleshly or algebraic.

But do you know what another part of being a senior developer is? Not just making them more productive, but also guiding the junior developers into becoming better, independent, self-tasking, senior coders. And that feedback loop doesn't exist here.

We're robbing ourselves of good future developers, because we aren't even thinking about the fact that the junior devs are actively learning from the small tasks we give them.

Will AI completely replace devs before we all retire? Maybe. Maybe not.

But long before that, the future coders who aren't being hired and trained because a senior dev doesn't understand that the junior devs become senior devs (and that's an important pipeline) and would rather pay $20/month for an LLM, are going to become a major loss/ brain drain domestically.

>>ang_ci+ae1
I think what is going to happen is that junior devs will develop a strong reliance on AI tools to be able to do anything. I cynically think this was OpenAI’s aim when they made ChatGPT free for students.

I had a rather depressing experience this semester in my office hours with two students who had painted themselves in a corner with code that was clearly generated. They came to me for help, but were incapable of explaining why they had written what was on their screens. I decided to find where they had lost the thread of the class and discovered that they were essentially unable to write a helloworld program. In other words, they lost the thread on day one. Up until this point, both students had nearly perfect homework grades while failing every in-class quiz.

From one perspective I understand the business case for pushing these technologies. But from another perspective, the long term health of the profession, it’s pretty shortsighted. Who knows, in the end maybe this will kill off the group of students who enroll in CS courses “because mom and dad think it’s a good job,” and maybe that will leave me with the group that really wants to be there. In the meantime, I will remind students that there is a difference between programming and computer science and that you really need a strong grasp of the latter to be an effective coder. Especially if you use AI tools.

>>raddan+gp1
Hard capitalism doesn't care about long term perspectives, the only yard stick is current performance and stock maximization. Otherwise US would a bastion of stellar public education for example, the investment in long term future of whole nation instead of few richest ones sending their kids to private schools, to stay above the rest.

So while I fully agree with you, this is not a concern for a single decision maker in private company world. And state such as US doesn't pick up this work instead, quietly agreeing with this situation.

Well, think for a second who makes similar budget and long term spending focus. Rich lawyers who chose to become much more rich politicians, rarely somebody else and almost never any more moral profession.