alt Hacker NewsI think this is good in general for being able to see what happens in the code of a PR, but probably more so to seniors.
If anything will be missing from juniors it will be the ability to run code in their heads if they've only written code via AI.
I think this is good in general for being able to see what happens in the code of a PR, but probably more so to seniors.
If anything will be missing from juniors it will be the ability to run code in their heads if they've only written code via AI.
I'm having a hard time justifying writing any code today.
In a fraction of time it takes me to solve any 20 - 40 line code problem, a coding agent can solve it 10 different ways in python and in TypeScript, inject performance logging, run each in 1,000,000 iterations with as many permutations as inputs, write comments at a 10th grade reading level so I understand what each does quickly, make a clean table with pros / cons and performance results, and I after considering the options choose one.
The problem is that the coding agents are not dependable -- they are reliably incorrect.
In the United States decades ago, a phone utility company was sued because they didn't allow women to be linemen working in the field. They lost and what they did was make changes like using lighter aluminum ladders getting rid of the heavy wooden ones, they replaced the wrenches with ones with longer handles so they had much more leverage, and many other things to make the work less physically punishing. A reporter asked some of the veteran linemen how they feel about working with the changes. The reply was, "why didn't we make these changes sooner?" None of them lost their job and their job got a whole lot easier.
The problem is verifying code quality. The coding agents can't reliably do it. But they as tools, can help both juniors and seniors make their job a whole lot easier.