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Ballad of the Junior Dev

Will AI be the last John Carmack?

In 2022, I found Python coding language. I always thought coding and scripting was so cool, and decided it was my time to learn. I studied Python and even began making a silly Medieval RPG game with Python (It was rough, but the passion was there). I fell in love with learning this language and wanted more. My friends were using C++ and I wanted in. I began learning C++ and found it was way too much for me at the time. Next I moved onto C# and I didn’t understand it very well until later. Next was Javascript. Javascript felt so good to use and so easy to create with. It came naturally to me, at least until I needed to learn asynchronous operations.

I spent countless hours studying, practicing, debugging, and playing around with these languages making simple scripts and solving problems. The joy of finally solving a problem or understanding a complicated concept was immeasurable. Then came the rise of AI, and with it, a great and terrible poison in the developer ecosystem.

The Beginning of the End

All around were the effects of AI. Art was being generated in the blink of an eye, new software, and apps were springing to life faster than ever, and new devs were being born by the hundred-thousands. Everything was moving at light speed and ideas were being brought to life in a flash. So why is this a problem?

The above is one of the well known flops of AI design for a production level service. After mocking people for not using AI, his app was hacked due to a design flaw. Now we see him scrambling to fix his app, in which was completely vibe coded. What went wrong?

A Lack of Foundational Knowledge

When I was attending CodePlatoon, there was a student in which let AI do all the work for them. Every project was completed by Claude, and every assignment was responded to by ChatGPT. On the other hand, there was a student who seldom used AI, and only for mundane tasks in which they already understood. The difference? Basic foundational knowledge. This brings me to my final point.

Why Were Not Getting Another John Carmack

People want a finished product, and AI gives them the option to cut big corners. Why do I need to understand a quaternion when AI can just write the code to handle one? The passion I felt to learn and gain new knowledge is rarely shared around my peers. The new mindset has become: “Use AI or you’ll be left behind.”

The more we let machines think and create for us, the more we deny ourselves the knowledge to architect better technology. Our senior devs will begin to die out as the pursuit of knowledge becomes less desirable. Here we sit hoping AI improves while learning nothing in the meantime.

The Solution

Understand what code you’re writing, and why it’ being written. Using AI isn’t inherently bad. Even this websites CSS was derived from an AI template, but it all makes sense to me and none of it jeopardizes my users. Stop cutting corners, start writing your own code, and learn to read documentation. Using AI when you have no foundational knowledge is dangerous and irresponsible for customer ready apps.

I hope you enjoyed my perspective on today’s development ecosystem. Goodbye for now.