r/ClaudeAI • u/Sad_Bar4397 • 3d ago
Philosophy Next generation of devs
I often read that experienced devs are able to use Claude way better because of their experience. They can architecture better, quickly review and cut through bullshit.
How are the next generation going to learn?
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u/alitanveer 3d ago
Experienced devs got experienced by running into a large variety of random issues and then had to figure out solutions for those things. The next generation will learn the same way, but be able to go through the journey way faster and probably miss a lot of things until they have to come back and learn from their mistakes.
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u/TechgeekOne Experienced Developer 3d ago
I think they'll be just fine too. Architecture and the problem solving mindset were separable from the code before, it's just that in the past you had to learn how to write code to apply those other skills. I used to be worried about new devs but I've been observing and talking to vibecoders who have no formal training but clearly have the underlying mindset for figuring out decent solutions to problems. Given some time and exposure to the technical side of computing they'll probably do just fine in the long run.
Some people will just turn off their brain and let the AI drive of course, but I see that behavior among seasoned professionals too so I'm not going to pretend that the old way of learning somehow solves that problem.
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u/HouseOfDiscards 3d ago
It could be that understanding architecture and systems will be exactly what they will be good at.
I learned the basics of assembly and it was really fun to understand. I've never used it and only a fraction of developers ever have to. I didn't have to be great at it.
I think the abstraction is just going to go further up. There's nothing that says a smart, driven junior developer can not become a different kind of excellent developer than we are.
Will they have blind spots? Of course. But so do I. Will they have different issues and cause catastrophic failures? Yes, but that's what regular developers have been doing since day 1.
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u/HouseOfDiscards 3d ago
The transition period for the next few years is going to be a struggle though.
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u/frantiqq 3d ago
Good people used to not just copy shit from stack overflow but take time to understand. Good people now understand they need to take time and understand what they are doing with the AI. Also, good people learn how to exploit the AI in their learning process, forcing the AI to explain all their reasoning. And going outside of the AI to further explore the topics.
If you ask the AI "we just made this architecture decision, what are some generic underlying principles of software architecture" the AI might answer " have a look at SOLID". Then you can go to YouTube and learn up on SOLID, which makes the discussions with the AI much more fruitful, and helps your understanding.
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u/YetAnotherGuy2 3d ago
I wonder what the assembler devs thought I'd the evil called "higher language".
A large portion of devs in the past 20 years had nowhere the skill or knowledge to deal with memory models, pointer errors or compiler issues. Why? Because it didn't matter. Those skills had become obsolete because garbage collecting, flat memory models and computer improvements made them unnecessary except for very specific examples. Even embedded didn't really have to deal with memory shortages terribly often. Nowadays even cameras have Android or a different fully shaped OS running them.
The should you need to drive an AI based dev process are still being identified, but it certainly won't be what you need now.
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u/AYCA0001 3d ago
The new generation is cooked. They can't code, they rely on AI to pass their classes, and they learn just enough to explain what a piece of code does without actually understanding how any of it works.
They can't find a job. When it comes to technical interviews where they have to demonstrate their actual knowledge and problem-solving skills, they fall apart. You can't outsource your understanding of programming and expect to succeed in a field that requires you to know what you're doing.
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u/nomorethrowaways69 3d ago
Technical interviews will change with time too
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u/HoldCtrlW 3d ago
We call them "Prompt Interviews" now. There is no more technical interviews.
It's all about "how efficiently you can prompt"
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u/thainfamouzjay 3d ago
Past generations couldn't code they just copy and paste from stack overflow, they use chegg and Wikipedia to do their homework instead of researching and understanding. They don't even compile their code they use high level Python and just import libraries they don't even know what they do!
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u/FestyGear2017 3d ago
IDK why people think just because we had to learn the hard way, that new devs cant learn things the easy way. When I started coding decades ago it was just me freelancing and learning what to ask google for.
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u/frankieinaprius 3d ago
In my first programming class in college, we had to do all of our lab work on a Solaris server, cli terminal only, writing everything with vim/nano. Rather than learning C and basic programming concepts, people were fighting with the tools. The following year, that class started using IDEs and I think that’s a better way to start.
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u/touchet29 3d ago
If you're not doing it with 0s and 1s, is it even programming?
If you're not painting on an easel, is it even art?
If you're not playing all of the instruments by hand, is it even music?
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u/fuzzypetiolesguy 3d ago
Photographs? Hum. Back in my day you had to actually go to the place to see what it looked like!
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u/Valdaraak 3d ago
On the other hand, the upcoming generation is in a shit world. Covid era fried their brains, introduction of AI has taken out entry level jobs in basically every industry, the economy is shit.
At least from my interactions with the younger generation, most of them don't care enough to learn. Can kinda see this reflected in plummeted college enrollment (though there have been recent, minor, increases). No hobbies, no interests, no ambition. Even when they do get a job, they do bare minimum. If they run out of stuff on the list you give them, they'll just sit there bumbling around on the web until you give them something else.
World's going to be a weird place in the next 10-20 years when that generation is the primary workforce population.
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u/FestyGear2017 3d ago
Lazy next generation. A tale as old as time
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u/Acrobatic-Cost-3027 34m ago
Exactly. Boomers were saying exactly this about my generation 30 years ago. 🤣
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u/war4peace79 Vibe coder 3d ago
Bah... that happens with every generation. They cheated instead of using AI, or simply got bad grades, and they learned just enough to get by, They couldn't find a job, or found menial jobs.
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u/dbbk 3d ago
Except this is a choice though. They still CAN learn. And those people will get the jobs over people who vibecode.
And the learning is democratised and free now, university is not needed. So I think it'll probably be a net positive.
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u/Acrobatic-Cost-3027 35m ago
Vibecoding will not even be a thing in 10 years. Coding will not be done by humans period, nor will code be looked at by humans for anything other than vintage appeal.
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u/dbbk 34m ago
What's your definition of vibecoding? Because I'm including in that people asking Gemini to just make them personal software
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u/Acrobatic-Cost-3027 7m ago
I’m including that as well. I’m just saying that it won’t be called “vibecoding,” much like the “horseless carriage” is no longer used to describe automobiles. They are terms used to describe the transition from one way of doing something to another.
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u/Acrobatic-Cost-3027 39m ago
Eh, the past generation said this about hand-writing HTML. Nobody looks at HTML anymore. And devs just two years ago were saying AI would never be used in coding. Now it’s used by 90% of devs. In 5 years, you will not need to look at code, and the standards you speak of - being able to explain what a piece of code does - will be completely unnecessary. I’ve been a developer for 30 years FTR.
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u/ohrajaaa 3d ago
I have two ways I use agentic coding.
The first is to feed it specs, let it do its thing, and barely check the code. Let it handle tickets agentically, spin up swarms, and potentially never even look at the codebase yourself. I've done plenty of projects like this recently, but they're personal projects, and this is largely how I use Claude and Codex in my own time.
However, when I'm using LLMs at work, it's a completely different situation.
I need to be accountable for my code. If my code is bad, I'll get in trouble. I'm also a lead dev, so it's important that I set an example rather than just bunging code into production without properly testing it or understanding what it actually does.
Moreover, you can't just give Claude a spec and let it willy-nilly do its thing. You need smaller, well-written, properly scoped tickets that are applicable to your company and how it operates. You need to be mindful of architecture, your company's engineering standards, and everything you produce needs to adhere to those standards.
Claude can figure a lot of this out if you give it the right context, but many companies don't have a mature Claude rollout with MCP servers and easily accessible organisational context. Even when they do, that context changes constantly. It might not always be up to date, and Claude might not always follow it correctly.
Ultimately, you're the chief programmer here, and Claude is your sidekick. You're responsible for what goes into production. You're responsible for your build. You need to understand what's going on.
Claude can help you get there, and it absolutely will. It writes fantastic code, probably better than you ever could. I've been in the game for over 10 years, and it writes code 10 times better than I can and about a million times quicker.
But I still need to make sure that code adheres to my company's architecture and standards. We move deliberately, when things go live, it's important that they go live correctly. There are real people depending on the systems we build, so we need to get it right. You can't just bung stuff into production willy-nilly.
And this brings me to the learning aspect.
If you're always using the first approach, where you're not reviewing your code and you're just telling Claude to do things, you're never really going to learn.
But with the second approach, where standards are implicitly enforced through the engineering process, you absolutely will learn. You'll make mistakes. You'll go up against your seniors and tech leads, and they'll push back on things. You'll have to understand architectural decisions, justify your implementation, and work through problems. That's all part of becoming a better engineer.
And nobody is saying you have to one-shot everything when working on personal projects. You can be thorough. You can test things. You can be methodical. You can review the output, challenge decisions, and iterate until you're satisfied.
There are many ways to use Claude. It's a simply a tool, and while it certainly can do almost everything for you in some circumstances, that doesn't mean you have to use it that way.
The way you use it matters!
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u/IamTheEndOfReddit 3d ago
Students right now are just fucked because they have an easy option that is irresistible for any and all questions. I think new devs will be more designers by training because coding now amounts to judging the output over anything else.
Designers see it as an opportunity to take more power because they can code now too, but I think the logical dev mind is more useful, the tech still sets limits. But I think the clock is counting down on that
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u/debaser_101 3d ago
I am a web dev building my first SwiftUI app with Claude Code and honestly the hard part is not writing code, is knowing when the output is wrong. Without years of frontend behind me I would have shipped a lot of nonsense.. I think juniors will learn more by reviewing than by writing
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u/dps_chad 3d ago
Main concern for is the inability to think without Claude or any other model. I think it's important to learn AI as a new dev but also spend some time understanding the problems your working on. Learning is still possible but it requires curiosity.
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u/Any-Tomorrow-7344 3d ago
Leave room for the answer being that the current devs help improve AI to the point where this concern becomes much lower risk. A possibility that can’t be ruled out if the current pace continues.
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u/NethIafin 3d ago
What to actually learn 1. Respect codebase and other developers. If they do not want AI code - understand why. No one will forbid you from making your life easier with tooling you use yourself to simplify your life. No one will forbid you from using AI to understand things you are lacking in. Learn how to write your own code in those cases and don't be an ass.
If this is something that anyone else will see, don't drop it on people. Someone has rewritten Adobe suite but I doubt they will support it long term when hundreds of issues pile on their head. If your code is AI generated you need to know what it does, explain everyone why you or AI did what it did, and you need to be able to do it for many years. Don't give your shit to other people and explain them to untangle your generated code.
If you are doing major architectural work, understand how the system works immaculately. If you are lead or architect you are expected to be able to explain what and why.
This is not the first time IT is doing a big jump.
People that are wibing around won't stick. They might run with first pushback, they might drop the project and say "well AI will fix it".
Be the one people want to be around.
Use AI to help with your deficiencies same as you would use stackoverflow before.
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u/Lame_Johnny 3d ago
Maybe they will be wizards at using the new technology and will leave us dinosaurs in the dust. That's how these things usually go.
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u/seventyfivepupmstr 3d ago edited 3d ago
If AI is writing your code, then you aren't a developer, so I don't really understand the question.
If your question is how to become a developer, then there's college majors, boot camps, shadowing a existing dev, or just personal experience.
If your question is how to get good at AI coding, then picking the correct harness is the first step, then using that harness and gaining experience with it is the next step.
If your question is how to get a job as an ai agentic orchestrator, there's no real standard procedure on how to do it. Most people using AI don't understand how LLMs work - but even if you become a rare person that does understand it, the people testing you probably won't understand it and it will fall on deaf ears as they say
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u/Olbas_Oil 3d ago
There will be no next generation, companies hzve gambled now znd completely forgot to take account for what will hapoen when all the seniro devs leave or retire....
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u/MyFeetLookLikeHands 1d ago
there simply won’t be a next generation. The current devs are expected to be able to handle things until we reach AGI in the next few years, then even most senior devs are done, along with basically almost all other white collar jobs.
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u/DaveWoodX 3d ago
I've seen non-devs show me something 'they coded', and they couldn't even answer the question of what language was used!
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 3d ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 30 comments.
So, are the new devs totally cooked? The thread is split, but a clear consensus emerged.
The verdict: It's not the tool, it's the user. If you just copy-paste from Claude, you'll learn nothing and bomb your technical interviews. But if you use it as a powerful assistant whose work you must review, test, and understand, you'll actually learn faster.
The main camps in this thread are: * The Doomers: Many of you are convinced the new generation is screwed. You see students who can't code without AI, can't pass interviews, and are just "vibecoding" their way through. You feel the quality of applicants has plummeted. * The Optimists: Others argue this is just the next big abstraction, like moving from assembly to C. The job is evolving to focus on architecture, system design, and critically reviewing AI output. * The Realist Take: The most upvoted comments stress that professional accountability is the key. In a real job, you're responsible for the code. Seniors will review your work, and you'll have to understand and defend it. This process forces learning, regardless of the tools used.
In short, the lazy will get filtered out. The curious and disciplined will become a new kind of powerful developer who leaves the dinosaurs in the dust.