[znpy]

> 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.

I assume that 20-30 years ago when juniors were using either ide-provided auto-completion or refactoring or gui designers some old graybeard developer had a similar reaction.

Nothing new under the sun.

On a different layer of thinking, it makes perfect sense. The more the computing industry progresses, the more it abstracts away from how the thing actually works.

I don't know the author of this post, but as a system engineer that works closely with many software engineers, there are so many of them that yap left and right about the code they wrote or the ecosystem around their main programming language but are completely hopeless to anything outside that scope. I've seen so many re-implement the wheel because they don't know about facilities provided by the operating system (let alone how to interface and make use of them).

There's so much stuff that's done by the kernel (linux) and could be re-used if somebody was able to dive into FFI and write the adequate wrappers. And that's just an example.

One might argue that junior developers are just starting at a higher level of abstraction.

[yodon]

>I assume that 20-30 years ago when juniors were using either ide-provided auto-completion or refactoring or gui designers some old graybeard developer had a similar reaction.

You assume wrong. Source: was there at the time.

This time is genuinely different.

[znpy]

it's always "different this time"

[Jensson]

Never before has a technology enabled kids to pass every high school class just by using it without learning anything. Calculators just solved a small part of math etc, this kind of technological change has never ever even close to happened before.

Maybe the kids will be fine anyway, but you can't say this time isn't different, it is different regardless of the outcome.

[yodon]

> it's always "different this time"

If you're extrapolating from a sample size of one massively disruptive workflow innovation, then of course, it's natural to assume if you've seen one you've seen them all.

That said, a few examples of disruptive workflow innovations from the past, from someone who was there at the time:

IDE's - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they said they didn't like them.

Memory managed languages - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they said they didn't like them.

Spell checkers and grammar assist - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they said they didn't like them.

Source control systems - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they said they loved the concept but they didn't like the one being used on the project (regardless of what it was).

Object oriented programming - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they immediately listed it as a skill on their resume.

GUI builders - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they actually liked them when they were new (there is probably one from a billion years ago they still think we should all be using today).

Digital readouts on machine tools (yes, massive disruptive workflow innovation) - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they said you should absolutely use them.

Calculators (when they were actually new) - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they competed to see who could use them the fastest (backlash against them came much, much later).

This one is different. Yes, you should absolutely use it, and yes, if you aren't careful, it risks making you stupid.

[znpy]

> GUI builders - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they actually liked them when they were new (there is probably one from a billion years ago they still think we should all be using today).

oh I remember the bashing agaist dreamweaver (and frontpage) in the early 2000s because it allowed people to make decent looking web pages without learning html.

> Calculators (when they were actually new) - gray beards didn't say they made you stupid, they competed to see who could use them the fastest (backlash against them came much, much later).

that was not my experience in school, quite the contrary: my teacher kept saying things like "you won't always have a calculator with you" (joke's on her, we how have computers with computing power that could compete a whole rack of the early 90ies in our pockets, pretty much always with us).

> when they were actually new

it doesn't have to be actually new, the discourse applies to tech that has just become available at the general public (not to over-specialized people with budget to acquire or license it)