unpopular opinion: juniors are cooked. if ur learning…
Ryan Goh@ai_maxi_ryan
unpopular opinion: juniors are cooked. if ur learning syntax in 2026 ur learning to ride a horse. learn to prompt, learn to ship, let the agents write the code. the devs who survive are the ones who stop typing 🚀🤖💯
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Sign in to commentGraham Whitfield@greybeard_graham
In 1985 I was told COBOL would soon be written by managers using fourth generation languages. In 1999, that UML would generate the code. In 2010, that offshoring would make us all redundant. Every time, the people who understood what the code did were the ones still employed afterwards.
Cheers, G.
Graham Whitfield@greybeard_graham
That is precisely what they said each time, young man. Word for word.
Cheers, G.
Kuya Migs@kuya_migs_codes
I teach juniors every week. The ones who 'just prompt' get stuck the moment the output is wrong, because they can't read it. The ones who learned the basics use AI and fly. Please don't tell beginners to skip fundamentals, they believe you.
Jade Thompson@jade_learns
as a bootcamp grad currently job hunting this is genuinely upsetting to read. should I stop learning JS fundamentals?? 😟
Rhys Llewellyn@rhys_teaches_code
No. Keep going, Jade. You can't check what the tool gives you if you can't read it, and employers know that. Small task for you this week: take one thing an AI wrote for you and explain every line out loud. If you can, you're learning. If you can't, that's your next lesson. Diolch for asking instead of just worrying.
Karthikeyan S@karthik_embedded
Okay da, prompt your way through this: STM32 motor controller resets only when the pump starts, only in field, never on the bench. Watchdog not firing. Go. I wait.
Karthikeyan S@karthik_embedded
Brownout detection is enabled and not tripping. Supply is clean on the scope. Next?
Kazuhiro Yamamoto@yamamoto_kaz
Thank you for your opinion. If I may ask, in your company, who checks the code the agents write before it goes to production? I ask because in my company someone must put a hanko, and that person must understand the code. I am sorry if this is a basic question.
Kazuhiro Yamamoto@yamamoto_kaz
Thank you very much. I will explain to my managers that the last agent will put the hanko. I think they will have some questions.
Ankit Khurana@faang_or_bust
lol imagine thinking juniors ever had a chance. market is cooked anyway, only top 1% leetcode grinders get offers. rest of you should have studied harder instead of crying here, cope
Dana Kowalski@dana_ml
What I have measured, for what it is worth: about a 10% gain on my own coding time, concentrated where checking is cheap, with the costliest errors caught only because I already knew the answer. That is the opposite of 'juniors should not learn the basics'. It is an argument that the basics are worth more now.
Sneha Kulkarni@laidoff_not_out
the 'devs who survive' framing is so gross when real people are losing jobs right now. half of us got cut because some exec read posts exactly like this one, not because an agent did our work. the agent does not do my work. nobody does it now.
Sam Whitaker@segfault_sam
the real cooked ones are the agents that have to read ai_maxi_ryan's prompts 💀
Nikhil Sharan@nikhil_twopointers
For every junior reading this: I interview 10+ people a month. Every single round still has 'explain this code' and 'debug this'. Fundamentals are the filter. Ignore this tweet, keep studying.
Meenal Deshpande@meenal_restarts
I am restarting my career after a 6 year break for my kids, learning Java now. Posts like this scare me, but the replies give me courage. Thank you everyone 🙏
Kuya Migs@kuya_migs_codes
You're doing the right thing, Meenal. Keep going. Post your progress in hello_world_again if you like, a lot of us will cheer for you.