Simon WillisonI like this take by @kentbeck on how AI-assisted programming changes the balance of which skills are most important
From this interview with @gergelyorosz https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tdd-ai-agents-and-coding-with-kent
Helge Heß@simon @kentbeck @gergelyorosz Do they discuss how people are going to acquire those 10% in the future (I assume those are the advanced seniority 10 percents?)
@helge @kentbeck @gergelyorosz that's one of the most interesting questions right now, I think
We clearly need to reimagine aspects of how we train new software engineers
Chris Eidhof@simon @helge @kentbeck @gergelyorosz my friend mentioned the other day we should also think about "training the AI". Should I publish books that are written for AI and not books written for people?
@chris @simon @kentbeck @gergelyorosz If you get paid for that, sure 🙂 I still think AI is a huge issue because of the "stealing" part (doesn't matter what you call it, but I think we all understand the issue and that it leads to content not being published anymore publicly).
It's essentially the other side of the seniority coin, if everyone just synthesises code, there is no new input for number 5.
It's essentially the other side of the seniority coin, if everyone just synthesises code, there is no new input for number 5.
Rob Napier@helge @chris @simon @kentbeck @gergelyorosz I'm sure that StackOverflow is a huge input for programming information, and I know I'm not alone in dramatically reducing my time there. After writing over 5700 answers over 15 years, I haven't answered anything in 2025. I do expect this to become an existential problem for the models across a lot of fields.
@helge @chris @simon @kentbeck @gergelyorosz But to Beck's point, I think to a first order, you should think of coding assistants like a higher-level programming language, not a complete reinvention of programming. I find that most of the usual skills still apply, even when they're running at their best. And to "how will junior devs learn the low level skills I know," I'd say the same way most devs learn assembly language. They don't. And it's mostly fine.
@helge @chris @simon @kentbeck @gergelyorosz My much bigger concern, having used coding assistants quite a bit now, is that they have the ability to really trash a code base really fast when they get confused, which is often. And I expect that this will be a major problem. I really like using them at the very start, but they tend to go off the rails pretty often, and I have to take control back. I expect that will give plenty of experience to junior devs.