> Seniors' attitudes on HN are often quick to dismiss AI assisted coding as something that can't replace the hard-earned experience and skill they've built up during their careers.

One definition of experience[0] is:

  direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge

Since I assume by "AI assisted coding" you are referring to LLM-based offerings, then yes, "hard-earned experience and skill" cannot be replaced with a statistical text generator.

One might as well assert an MS-Word document template can produce a novel Shakespearean play or that a spreadsheet is an IRS auditor.

> Or maybe the whole senior/junior thing is a red herring and pure coding and tech skills are being deflated all across the board. Perhaps what is needed now is an entirely new skill set that we're only just starting to grasp.

For a repudiation of this hypothesis, see this post[1] also currently on HN.

0 - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience

1 - https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/why-generative-ai-codin...