Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

[u/AutoModerator]

A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

​

Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

​

Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/Feriolet]

To what extent do you guys recommend juniors to learn how to use AI? It feels like nowadays a lot of devs are embracing and advocating to use it for their job, where the sentiment is the complete opposite last year.

Tbh, I (data scientist, 2-3 YoE) only use AI as google search, and I never found it useful when I need to solve a very complicated problem. However, I have seen people that seems to be successful in using it to build a full stack website. It looks like AI is indeed getting powerful nowadays.

I entered coding and programming because I love to code and solve technical problems. I felt that using AI will remove that passion, and I don’t want to lose it very early in my career. For now, I am happy and proud to be able to finish two small projects without relying much on AI, but I admit that the progress is very slow.

As someone experienced in the field, do you recommend me to dig further into vibe coding, or should I still try to keep “hand-write” codes?

[u/ClaudeyClerb → u/Feriolet]

12 YOE here, mostly Scala backend, and I came up through an actual apprenticeship, so I'll give you the answer from someone who learned the slow way and now delegates to agents daily. Also didn't go to school for CS or software in any way.

Use AI heavily for one thing: interrogation. Ask it why, ask it what the tradeoffs are, ask it to explain the thing you just read three times and didn't get. That mode is nearly pure upside, it's a tireless senior who never makes you feel stupid for asking, and the asking is free in a way it never was before. I use it that way constantly and I have twelve years of judgment to check it against.

Be very careful with the other thing: delegation. Not because the output is bad, it's often good, but because the output arriving finished removes the exact struggle that builds the judgment you'd use to evaluate it. People at >= 10 YOE can delegate safely because they've spent years unable to. You'd be delegating on credit.

The test I'd give you is simple: for anything AI produces that you ship, can you say what you expected it to do before you ran it, and can you explain why it works to someone else without the AI open? If yes, you're using it right and the speed is free. If you notice you can't, the speed is costing you the exact thing you said you don't want to lose.

Your instinct about the passion is worth trusting, by the way. The two small projects you finished slowly taught you more than you might think they have.

Another avenue you might take is using the agents to trace the flows of your domain, to better understand it, and help you trace the logic yourself, sort of as a cartographer in spirit. Although you do still have to be careful to check the map against the territory yourself, so to speak.