Is GenAI going to replace junior developers? In which type of projects would you DEFINITELY use GenAI, and in which ones would you avoid it as much as possible?
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You're kidding right? Maybe you arn't, in which case, no. Developers get better through experience, being in the trenches and solving problems so that they can generalize solutions to new problems. If you do away with Jr Devs how do you get Mid and Senior Devs?
Use: None, avoid: All
Is GenAI going to replace junior developers? No, it is going to help improve the productivity and quality of the work done by junior developers.
I would start by using GenAI in safe use cases; like to analyze legacy code and give an outline of what some code method is doing. Or to suggest unit tests to provide some base code coverage to code with no existing coverage.
I would not suggest junior developers use it to generate new code as they may not have the experience to validate if what was generated is correct and high quality.
I do not see GenAI to replace junior software developers in the foreseeable future. It will reshape their role and probably reduce the overall demand. GenAI provides valuable support especially for developing software in established frameworks and applications and make tedious task less time-consuming such as testing, debugging and documentation