AI and the future web developers
In my previous post I talked about how the AI can generate most, if not all, of the code I need to write at the moment. I also mentioned that the code sometimes had the odd bug, but they were generally easy to spot and fix.
Someone sent me a DM pointing out that the reason they were easy for me to spot was because I have decades of experience writing code. This is absolutely true, and it is part of the reason I am happy to get the AI to write the code. I think of my AI coder as a junior developer, or even developer. Not sure they are senior developers yet. I get to be the senior man who does the code review of you like.
Where does this leave people who are trying to become web developers? Before I get to that though I want to point out that the AI doesn't do everything yet. I did get the AI to write a number of Python scripts and batch files so I could deploy things like a Django dev environment and to perform other tasks. Ultimately though, doing a deployment and config is still beyond the AI for now.
Coming back to coding and the junior developer. If I am a company that can use AI to replace my junior dev then why not? It sounds a little brutal, and let's be honest, it is. But if you are looking for cost savings, or you are struggling to recruit candidates of the right caliber what do you do? One thing you can do is look at AI.
I don't want people to misunderstand me hear, I have no answer, I am just raising the issue and pointing out the truth.
People with many years of experience are already senior developers or team leaders and much of their job may involve reviewing the code of junior members of the team. They can recognize good and bad code, this is one of the skills they have learned over the years. They decide if something can be pushed to testing and ultimately to production.
Do they care where the code originates? Provided it is good enough, who cares if it is junior dev or AI? I don't care.
I still see a lot of boot camps being advertised and a whole lot of courses about learning to program so you can become a web developer and I'm beginning to wonder about the wisdom of going down that road. Why spend £10k and 6-9 months learning to code when an AI can still kick your arse? Wouldn't it be wiser to learn how to use AI to write code? Become a specialist at pushing the boundaries of AI to produce "no code" solutions. By this, I mean that you individually do not write any code. Again, I have no answer.
Of course, part of my argument is that there is still someone, me, who checks the code. How do you get that skill set in a short period of time? I don't know, it took me years. How do you get experience if you can't get a job because the AI has taken your junior-level job? In the next few years, there is a real chance that there will be AI that can perform code reviews to a high enough level that your senior dev, me, no longer needs to review the code.
Is it possible to accelerate this type of learning, the learning we call experience? For humans, I don't think it is. Which means we are in a really strange period. We need new devs for now, or do we? If we do for how long? 1 year, 3, 5. Will there be any new senior developers in the future? Or are we the last generation of human senior developers? I'll do another post on the idea of junior and senior AI developers another day.
Over the years I have encouraged everyone who has shown an interest in web development to have a go. I have enjoyed being a web developer so much so that I avoided going into senior management which was the obvious career progression. Web development is a great job. Now though I am questioning if I should encourage people to learn the skills you need to be a junior developer.
In the past, I would happily send people over to w3schools as a starting place to become familiar with all things web-related. I still might, but not to learn to code. I now have AI assistants as junior developers that are very good. I don't need to pay them and they never get bored etc. I just have to be hyper-specific on what I require from them and at the moment they are not intelligent enough to ask questions, but that is only months away I reckon. Once they can...
So what should people learn? Well, this is what is going to become the core of the next set of posts because it will involve using AI as part of that learning process. Maybe we should be encouraging the learning of grammar, logic (or dialectic), rhetoric, ethics, philosophy, mathematics, and other skills that will enable us to make the most out of our interaction with AI. Maybe we need to learn to think.
AI is going to change the face of education forever. Will this be for the best? Maybe, maybe not, it really will come down to how we implement it. Ultimately I don't think it will put teachers out of a job it will be the complete opposite and teachers will become our most prized asset, but more on that another day.
Bryan
ps, I wrote this, so if it is shit, it is because I haven't got any help from the AI just yet. Probably only a matter of time. The summary is provided by an AI.