Junior Developers Aren't Obsolete

While this is basically just an advertisement for GitHub Copilot, written by GitHub and published on their official blog, it does make a couple interesting points. Here they are:

1. You can use LLMs to help you learn faster.

2. Review other coders' code to help you learn.

I fully agree with the second one.

I only cautiously agree with the first one, and I'm pretty skeptical of the formula they give in the article. Traditionally, education is accomplished by studying primary and secondary sources, and then by practicing. LLMs don't somehow hack around that core idea, but I think there are ways they can streamline the process. What I propose is that you ask pointed questions to the LLM and have it provide sources in its answer, which you then go and check and read parts of. You still need to evaluate whether each source is trustworthy, but the LLM could save you the initial trouble of tracking down the sources in the first place.

My general advice here though is to tread very cautiously. I think there's a real danger of fooling yourself into thinking you did all of this learning when in reality you're outsourcing a crucial part of the learning process (such as critical thinking) to the LLM, and the really problematic part is that the LLM is pretty much the perfect tool to trap you in that way.

In a few years seniors will be getting 7 figures to deal with tech debt and juniors easily mid 6 figures because they are cheaper than the seniors, and there will still be fewer of them. Not everyone burned by the learn to code/get a difficult degree only to have nearly all jobs go to india, especially STEM jobs, will be around, and if they are, they will want compensation for this bullshit.