[fourside]

> You still need to do a lot of work to get it production ready, but it's as if you have an infinite number of junior engineers at your disposal now all working on different things.

One issue with junior devs is that because they’re not fully autonomous, you have to spend a non trivial amount of time guiding them and reviewing their code. Even if I had easy access to a lot of them, pretty quickly that overhead would become the bottleneck.

Did you think that managing a lot of these virtual devs could get overwhelming or are they pretty autonomous?

[fabrice_d]

They wrote "You still need to do a lot of work to get it production ready". So I would say it's not much better than real colleagues. Especially since junior devs will improve to a point they don't need your hand holding (remember you also were a junior at some point), which is not proven will happen with AI tools.

[bmcahren]

Counter-point A: AI coding assistance tools are rapidly advancing at a clip that is inarguably faster than humans.

Counter-point B: AI does not get tired, does not need space, does not need catering to their experience. AI is fine being interrupted and redirected. AI is fine spending two days on something that gets overwritten and thrown away (no morale loss).

[HappMacDonald]

Counter-counter-point A: If I work with a human Junior and they make an error or I familiarize them with any quirk of our workflow, and I correct them, they will recall that correction moving forward. An AI assistant either will not remember 5 minutes later (in a different prompt on a related project) and repeat the mistake, or I'll have to take the extra time to code some reminder into the system prompt for every project moving forward.

Advancements in general AI knowledge over time will not correlate to improvements in remembering any matters as colloquial as this.

Counter-counter-point B: AI absolutely needs catering to their experience. Prompter must always learn how to phrase things so that the AI will understand them, adjust things when they get stuck in loops by removing confusing elements from the prompt, etc.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I find myself thinking about juniors vs AI as babies vs cats. A cat is more capable sooner, you can trust it when you leave the house for two hours, but it'll never grow past shitting in a box and needing to be fed.

[TheHegemon]

> If I work with a human Junior and they make an error or I familiarize them with any quirk of our workflow, and I correct them, they will recall that correction moving forward

I really wish that were the case. Most of the Jr Engineers I work with have to be told the same thing multiple times, in different ways, for things to stick.

[scragz]

most of the coding agents now encourage you to make a rule for those times so it does remember.

[tom_m]

There's going to be a limit though. Plus you have to instruct them correctly.

B. Yea, that's true. I used to have over 4,000 GitHub contributions a year and it dropped to 1,000 as I got older and managed people. I used to be able to work 48 hrs straight but can't as much anymore...but you still have to be there to instruct the AI agent. It can't do it all on its own.

[tom_m]

You also have to provide accurate instructions.

I find most often times, "bugs" aren't with writing code that doesn't compile or doesn't have passing tests. The "bugs" come from not understanding the requirements and what it is you're building.

I'm not entirely sure AI will help this at all. People are generally bad at describing software and how they want it to work. They are inaccurate there or entirely omit things in the requirements.

Yes, though, it would be overwhelming to manage a bunch of AI agents. Context switching and redirecting, guiding, will be very difficult and not everyone's cup of tea.

If argue this isn't really a result of AI though. Many people are already in this boat today. The industry is set up in this way with contractors and outsourced devs that are at a junior level...because it's the attraction of cheap labor. Many businesses are attracted to this beyond programming. One of the questions is going to be, is the cost per token economics cheaper? So long as it's cheaper, AI coding agents will have a future. If it proves to not be cheaper (and this could take years to prove out), then I don't think it'll be as popular. I think people will need to go back to the drawing board on how we use AI agents or use AI for other purposes (like training, education, developer onboarding, code reviews, debugging, etc.)

[rfoo]

You don't need to be nice to your virtual junior devs. Saves quite a lot time too.

As long as I spend less time reviewing and guiding than doing it myself it's a win for me. I don't have any fun doing these things and I'd rather yelling at a bunch of "agents". For those who enjoy doing bunch of small edits I guess it's the opposite.

[HappMacDonald]

I'm definitely wary of the concept of dismissing courtesy when working with AI agents, because I certainly don't want to lose that habit when I turn around and have to interact with humans again.

[brookst]

Exactly. Courtesy and kindness are largely for the benefit of the giver. People who think “now I’m free to be the jerk I really am” worry me.

[rfoo]

There's a very large gap between being super nice to a human and being a jerk.

I don't think it benefits me much by very politely suggesting that its approach may not work and emphasize on the good part of the idea it generates and it would be better if it could try to push in another direction for example X. Like I do when talking to junior engineers.

I usually just say, "This does not work because of ..., Y is good though, change your mind and assess X now". I can also say this when I'm not actually sure whether X works or not, without worrying about my words sending an intern / a junior engineer into days of struggling on a deadend.

[HappMacDonald]

Relevent SMBC https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ai-15