Apropos the impact of AI/ML on our industry - I have found that you need to treat AI like a junior dev, but also need to treat junior devs as soon-to-be senior devs.
AI is a junior dev who will do anything you tell it to, no matter how stupid.
Junior devs want to be senior devs - and we all know you do that by not doing stupid things.
I’ve brought junior devs up to senior level by having them shoulder-surf my productive interactions with AI. AI makes it much easier to become a senior dev, as should be the case. But a junior devs working alone with AI is always going to be less effective than a senior dev. Onboard human junior devs with AI and you will not just have the AI force multiplier operating in your organization, you’ll have, suddenly, a ton more senior devs.
Of course all of this depends on the humans being honest about their abilities and working to sharpen and refine their skills. AI is the lodestone upon which that can occur - it is also a blunt force instrument that will lead to loss of consciousness if you’re not careful.
The tricky part about this is, of course, that if you don’t treat AI like a junior devs and review every single thing it provides you, it will rapidly transform the senior devs to junior…
In short, it’s the humans that make the difference, even still today. AI is just another tool - and no tool is effective without proper methodology in place to prevent its weaponization against its users.
AI is a junior dev who will do anything you tell it to, no matter how stupid.
Junior devs want to be senior devs - and we all know you do that by not doing stupid things.
I’ve brought junior devs up to senior level by having them shoulder-surf my productive interactions with AI. AI makes it much easier to become a senior dev, as should be the case. But a junior devs working alone with AI is always going to be less effective than a senior dev. Onboard human junior devs with AI and you will not just have the AI force multiplier operating in your organization, you’ll have, suddenly, a ton more senior devs.
Of course all of this depends on the humans being honest about their abilities and working to sharpen and refine their skills. AI is the lodestone upon which that can occur - it is also a blunt force instrument that will lead to loss of consciousness if you’re not careful.
The tricky part about this is, of course, that if you don’t treat AI like a junior devs and review every single thing it provides you, it will rapidly transform the senior devs to junior…
In short, it’s the humans that make the difference, even still today. AI is just another tool - and no tool is effective without proper methodology in place to prevent its weaponization against its users.