AI Assistants Are Great, If You're Already Great

I thought AI coding assistants would be a great leveller. You know, finally close the gap between junior and senior developers. Give the newbies a decade of experience in a chatbot window.

Turns out they’re a force multiplier. And forces multiply in both directions.

The people getting the most out of GitHub Copilot and friends are the ones who already know what they’re doing. Senior devs who review their own code. People who already think about architecture. Folks who can smell a dodgy suggestion from three blocks away.

The AI doesn’t give them new skills. It just makes their existing ones run at double speed.

Meanwhile, if you don’t know whether the generated code is any good, the AI doesn’t help with that bit. It’ll cheerfully generate a perfectly compilable function that deletes production data. It’s confidently wrong, and it sounds very sure of itself. Like a junior developer who’s watched a lot of TED talks.

This pattern is boringly consistent. Factory owners in the 1800s noticed that workers who already had self-discipline did better with factory discipline. Personal computers in the 1980s mostly helped people who were already educated. The technology that’s supposed to democratise everything ends up helping the people who least need help.

So here’s the thing. If you’re a senior developer, AI will make you faster. You’ll evaluate its output, cherry-pick the good bits, and move on.

If you’re a junior developer, AI won’t give you judgment. It’ll just give you more rope.

Do with that what you will.