Matthew GarrettMar 7

My job as a senior developer with a team of juniors is to figure out what to write, sketch a PoC as guidance, and then delegate the actual implementation to them. I'm going to look at that, explain misunderstandings or poor style choices, and guide them into implementing something that meets our standards.

I don't think LLMs can do my job yet. But I think we're getting shockingly close to them being able to do the other part. And I'm worried how we're going to get more senior developers.

Show threadGregMar 7
@mjg59 every mid-to-large FOSS project is seeing their "Good First Issue"s getting sniped by 20 LLM bots. Those exist to feed new contributors into dedicated ones. If you cut the bottom rungs off the ladder, how is anyone going to be able to get to the top?
Show threadMatthew GarrettMar 7
@greg yeah, exactly. I've helped people turn into senior devs, I don't know how to turn an LLM into one - embodying good taste is a different problem to generating code that meets a functional description
Show threadPaul McMillanMar 7

@mjg59 @greg I agree wholeheartedly with the junior pipeline problem, though I suspect that we end up with junior devs who are good at piloting the models, and learn to debug even hard problems within that context.

We didn't stop being able to computer when people stopped learning assembly or c, I hope we have a similar outcome here.

Show threadPatrick Georgi

@greg @mjg59 @PaulM What "junior devs that pilot the models"?

The promise that's going around on golf courses is: If a senior with an agent can get stuff done as well as a senior with juniors, you don't need to hire those pesky juniors at all. (and at some point, you-the-CxO can replace the senior dev who's piloting the model because you can just tell the model yourself.)

Mar 7 at 6:20amWeb