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It’s Not A.I. — Junior Developers Have Always Struggled to Code
AI, as of late, is taking the blame for making junior developers “worse” at writing code, but in my 20 years of experience-junior developers have always struggled to code well. Well being the keyword. It’s not a new problem. The difference? AI is just simply just highlighting the fact a bit more.
For decades, junior programmers have relied on Stack Overflow, online tutorials, and helpful senior engineers to guide them in their day to day work. AI tools like Copilot aren’t replacing deep learning-they’re just streamlining what has always been a part of the learning process.
Before the time of A.I.
I started coding before Stack Overflow existed. Back then, we had 10–20lb textbooks, binders full of half-legible notes, and forums where getting an answer could take days.
In 2003, this was the way. And for the most part, we made it work. You weren’t going to become the #1 ranked programmer in the world overnight, but you were going to learn about algorithms, data structures, operating systems, and a bit of SQL (a bit).
Then Stack Overflow came along-and guess what? It faced the same scrutiny that AI tools are facing today. Developers were supposedly getting lazy. Universities banned it. People claimed it would make engineers…
