Something’s been bugging me about how new devs and I need to talk about it. We’re at this weird inflection point in software development. Every junior dev I talk to has Copilot or Claude or GPT running 24/7. They’re shipping code faster than ever. But when I dig deeper into their understanding of what they’re shipping? That’s where things get concerning. Sure, the code works, but ask why it works that way instead of another way? Crickets. Ask about edge cases? Blank stares. The foundational knowledge that used to come from struggling through problems is just… missing. We’re trading deep understanding for quick fixes, and while it feels great in the moment, we’re going to pay for this later.
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.