Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
This is already the second time I’ve observed this. People coming from highly respected universities are doing everything with AI. It’s even hard to argue with them, since it’s all cross-checked with ChatGPT and similar tools. The picture of software development also looks completely different. Code that used to be readable in a few lines becomes 100 lines—overblown because, well, code is cheap. Now, I could argue that it makes things unreadable and so on, but honestly, who cares? Right? The AI can fix it if it breaks... So what do you guys think? Is this the future? Maybe the skill to focus on is orchestrating AI, and if you don’t do that, you become a legacy developer—someone with COBOL-like skills—still needed, but from the past millennium. 15 comments on Hacker News.
This is already the second time I’ve observed this. People coming from highly respected universities are doing everything with AI. It’s even hard to argue with them, since it’s all cross-checked with ChatGPT and similar tools. The picture of software development also looks completely different. Code that used to be readable in a few lines becomes 100 lines—overblown because, well, code is cheap. Now, I could argue that it makes things unreadable and so on, but honestly, who cares? Right? The AI can fix it if it breaks... So what do you guys think? Is this the future? Maybe the skill to focus on is orchestrating AI, and if you don’t do that, you become a legacy developer—someone with COBOL-like skills—still needed, but from the past millennium.
This is already the second time I’ve observed this. People coming from highly respected universities are doing everything with AI. It’s even hard to argue with them, since it’s all cross-checked with ChatGPT and similar tools. The picture of software development also looks completely different. Code that used to be readable in a few lines becomes 100 lines—overblown because, well, code is cheap. Now, I could argue that it makes things unreadable and so on, but honestly, who cares? Right? The AI can fix it if it breaks... So what do you guys think? Is this the future? Maybe the skill to focus on is orchestrating AI, and if you don’t do that, you become a legacy developer—someone with COBOL-like skills—still needed, but from the past millennium. 15 comments on Hacker News.
This is already the second time I’ve observed this. People coming from highly respected universities are doing everything with AI. It’s even hard to argue with them, since it’s all cross-checked with ChatGPT and similar tools. The picture of software development also looks completely different. Code that used to be readable in a few lines becomes 100 lines—overblown because, well, code is cheap. Now, I could argue that it makes things unreadable and so on, but honestly, who cares? Right? The AI can fix it if it breaks... So what do you guys think? Is this the future? Maybe the skill to focus on is orchestrating AI, and if you don’t do that, you become a legacy developer—someone with COBOL-like skills—still needed, but from the past millennium.
Hacker News story: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?
![Hacker News story: Ask HN: Am I getting old, or is working with AI juniors becoming a nightmare?]()
Reviewed by Tha Kur
on
April 24, 2026
Rating:
No comments: