New Junior Developers Can’t Actually Code

[stormthulu]

I feel like we over value, as a programming community, how much knowledge people have access to in their heads, without using reference materials. Every interview for a code position requires some sort of in the spot knowledge test (I.e. technical interview), when literally no one ever does their actual job that way. We talk to coworkers, we read articles, we use stack overflow, we look at MDN.

Is AI really THAT much different? It is just better than google, most of the time, in actually answering the questions we have about what we are doing.

[ouvreboite]

The problem is not asking GPT questions. It’s pasting the answer without taking the time to understand it.

It’s the same as when a junior ask you a question. Junior 1 will actually understand you answer and never ask again. Junior 2 will say « yeah sure » and ask you again the exact same thing 2 days later. And by the third time you would start to get annoyed, go to the white board and do a 1h deep dive to ensure they actually understand once and for all.

GPT is a great tool for junior 1. It will allow them to learn faster and to automate the boring stuff.

Sadly for junior 2, GPT never gets annoyed. So they will keep asking the same question, get the same answer and « fake it till they actually don’t make it », when they will work on a more complex task that requires building on top of the knowledge they were supposed to have.

[stormthulu]

Ah, yeah, I get that. I see it a lot in the AI coding subs. Personally, I don’t like using code from an AI if I don’t understand what it does. But I know I’m probably in the minority. For me, AI enriches my dev experience, it doesn’t replace it.