This is a story of lack of documentation, not of AI
I agree with the author that AI has the tragic ability to replace junior developers, but not senior ones. The problem is that the only way to become a senior developer is to have been a junior developer, so that in a few years, the lack of junior developers today will mean a lack of senior developers tomorrow.
As a software architect, I know the complaint: many senior developers hate working with junior developers, because it takes them more time to supervise the junior developer than to write the code themselves. AI gives them (senior developers) a chance to do what the junior developer would do a little slower, an order of magnitude faster; so why train a junior developer?
I suppose in five years, all senior developers will be poached from open source projects, since that’s the only pipeline remaining.
Is that the way by which open-source projects will eventually be killed off by capitalism?
What? No! Evil corps will think of open source as free training courses. What might happen is that open source projects will be limited to stuff the corps have no interest in. Less Linux, more WordPress clones! Definitely no more Postgres, that shit’s cutting into profit margins. (See MySQL for evidence.)
Management is hoping LLMs improve to replace senior developers before it becomes a problem
Documentation won’t save you if you’ve forgotten how to code
What does “forgotten how to code” mean, practically?
There are plenty of people who refuse to use AI - just call them? This story time doesn’t make any sense to me
If you actually read the article, you’d know.
It’s not one person forgetting. It’s institutional knowledge disappearing. Entry level coding positions disappearing means in 10-15 years, you’re looking at a shortage of senior devs, because a lot fewer people were building up their skills during that time due to the lack of jobs allowing for it