> But if I was a junior I'd be very worried about the longevity I can expect as a dev. It's already easier for many/most cases to assign work to a LLM vs handholding a human through it.

This sounds kind of logical, but really isn't.

In reality you can ASSIGN a task to a junior dev and expect them to eventually complete it, and learn from the experience as well. Sure there'll likely be some interaction between the junior dev and mentor, and this is part of the learning process - something DESIREABLE since it leads to the developer getting better.

In contrast, you really cant "assign" something to an LLM. You can of course try to, and give it some "vibe coding" assignment like "build me a backend component to read the data from the database", but the LLM/agent isn't an autonomous entity that can take ownership of the assignment and be expected to do whatever it takes (e.g. coming back to you and asking for help) to get it done. With todays "AI" technology it's the AI that needs all the handholding, and the person using the AI is the one who has effectively taken the assignment, not the LLM.

Also, given the inability of LLMs to learn on the job, using an LLM as a tool to help get things done is going to be a groundhog day experience of having to micro-manage the process in the same way over and over again each time you use it... time that would have been better invested in helping a junior dev get up to speed and in the future be an independent developer that tasks can indeed be assigned to.

▲

enraged_camel 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>> e.g. coming back to you and asking for help

Funny you mention this because Opus 4.5 did this just yesterday. I accidentally gave it a task with conflicting goals, and after working through it for a few minutes it realized what was going on, summarized the conflict and asked me which goal should be prioritized, along with detailed pros and cons of each approach. It’s exactly how I would expect a mid level developer to operate, except much faster and more thorough.

	▲	HarHarVeryFunny 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, they continue to get better, but they are not at human level (and jr devs are humans too) yet, and I doubt the next level "AGI" that people like Demis Hassabis are projecting to still be 10 years away will be human level either.

▲

lupire an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Doesn't matter. First, yes, a modern AI will come back and ask questions. Second, the AI is so much faster at interactions than a human is, that you can use that saved time to glance at its work and redirect it. The AI will come back with 10 prototype attempts in an hour, while a human will take a week for each, with more interupt questions for you about easy things

	▲	HarHarVeryFunny 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, LLMs are a useful tool, and fast, but the point is they don't have human level intelligence, can't learn, and are not autonomous outside of an agent that will attempt to complete a narrow task (but with no ownership and guarantee of eventual success). We'll presumably get there eventually and build "artificial humans", but for now what we've got is LLMs - tools for language task automation. If you want to ASSIGN a task to something/someone then you need a human or artificial human. For now that means assigning the task to a human, who will in turn use the LLM as a tool. Sure there may be some productivity increase (although some studies have indicated the exact opposite), but ultimately if you want to be able to get more work done in parallel then you need more entities that you can assign tasks do, and for time being that means humans.