3rd option. They got complacent and old and have trouble learning (don’t realize it) and can’t grok the new medium.
I have already seen the impact of AI systems, reducing the number of junior coding positions and outsourcing.
On the other hand, anyone who actually takes the time to get good with AI coding tools can be performing at senior levels, much more quickly, so there’s that too.
I’m not convinced that it’s some kind of apocalypse as much as it is a massive shift that is going to raise all boats and bring about a renaissance of productivity, and incredibly massive amounts of code, which hopefully is a higher quality because there’s no longer written by an individual in isolation but by a team of software engineers working in concert with AI.
I can’t tell you number times where people were screaming and yelling about how coding was coming to an end and everyone was going to be unemployed in a few years —yet here we are…
Also see "death of the sys admin by way of AWS and the like"
People don't magically become senior engineers, they need to get experience of the basics. Traditionally that's done by being hired as a junior engineer and doing a few years of fairly dull work under the supervision of the more senior engineers, who gradually prod you into doing things well.
Bootcamps have been somewhat filling the ever increasing void for junior positions to some extent (in the process making the barrier to entry into the industry higher for people who can't afford to literally pay for the junior roles that used to pay them), but there's still a chasm between someone fresh out of a bootcamp program and a developer who you can let loose on a project unsupervised.
No. They are orthogonal modes of thinking. That said, getting good at prompting LLM is already making people better communicators. That will be a big benefit to seniors as they can use their prompting skills to direct junior staff more efficiently. But better at thinking about the trade offs that senior devs need to think about, nope.
For juniors - I want them to become eventually independent so I don’t have to worry about them and their tasks (and can give them vaguer tasks) so it’s a different goal.