- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
No. Junior Devs usually can’t code. Anyone who lacks experience in a given field usually is not proficient in that field. That’s not specific to software engineering.
The fix for this is pretty simple. It’s just one that not every senior dev is going to want to hear. You have to do the one thing that a lot of us don’t want to do: talk to people. You’ll find that if you make an effort to build rapport with the juniors and be at least as quick to point out their successes as you are to point out their failures, more often than not they will learn to trust you and come to you for guidance.
This feels a lot like the common “millennials can’t do X anymore” that we used to see all the time.
I switched careers recently from software engineering to teaching. Young people are fine.
Some things have changed. Those with no previous experience need a little help understanding file systems and moving files around, something they didn’t really have to do on iPads and Chromebooks.
Besides that students pick things up quickly. Find it as interesting and exciting as we did and often impress me by using more advanced features than we discuss in class.
Yes, they try to use AI. I usually explain to them that AI can likely do all their assignments in our classes not because AI is a good programmer but because these are introductory classes where the assignments are simple.
So far AI still can’t produce a perfect assignment for the students. And an easy way to tell they’re using AI is to see if their code is formatted too well. Most beginners will screw up indention somewhere in their programs. So what do I do if they use AI and then ask me for help (because AI didn’t do exactly what they wanted)? I tell them to let AI fix it. They end up having to rewrite so much before I help them that asking AI isn’t worth it to begin with.
Anyway, to summarize kids are still learning to code, still improving, and there’s going to be a lot of talented junior engineers graduating.
Every junior dev I talk to has Copilot or Claude or GPT running 24/7.
Also
Hi, I’m Namanyay — a professional developer since the age of fourteen, now building AI tools to enhance human potential.
Bravo, sir, bravo 👏.
professional since 14
Hmmm child labor
Something’s been bugging me about how new devs and I need to talk about it.
Missed a word in the freaking opening of the article
The more I code the more i realise I can’t code for shit.
Not sure how this relates but similar vibe.
That’s a broad brush to paint with. Pretty sure that there are people out there entering the workforce who know what an edge case is.
When have they ever known to program? That is the point of being a junior.
feels like this is propaganda to pay juniors less and skirt seniors responsibility to train them
And young cinematographers can’t use a light meter. Who cares? If the result is good the result is good.
The reality is “knowing how to code” isn’t a perfectly defined, singular thing. It’s ever evolving.
Namanyay, I’m sorry to say, sounds like a relative newbie when it comes to software development. The refrain “junior software developers can’t actually code” has been around as long as software development.
I remember when Stack Exchange first popped up, senior developers complained “junior developers don’t actually LEARN anything anymore; they just copy code off of Stack Exchange without understanding what it does!”
And before SE? We were doing the exact same thing in the comp.* newsgroups. And before that? When you started developing something, a senior dev dropped a bunch of books on your desk and said “when you’ve finished reading those, let’s talk.”
The truth is, ever since libraries have been a thing, the majority of developers have just used the libraries without really understanding what goes on inside them. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing — the entire point of abstraction is so that developers can focus on the stuff they need to get done while ignoring the already solved problems.
The issues arise when you place code monkeys in software architecture or senior development positions, and they’ve never had the curiosity to read through the header files for those libraries they use, but instead just let Claude code complete their way to functionality. Because then most style guides with teeth go out the window, as there’s no intention behind the choices made.
And this results in something that really irks (and always has) senior software developers: instead of writing really clean, performant and novel code, those senior devs have to spend all their time doing code reviews and editing and refactoring codebases that nobody else understands.
Same as it ever was.
Yep I remember the same complaint 10+ years ago. They are jr for a reason.
Congratulations … you’ve trained a generation of junior product managers.