AI has a polarizing reputation in many practices such as art, music, and coding, and seeing as you can make copies of works based on recorded patterns in less than half the time, it is understandable why people can dislike it. I like AI, it can generate funny images, make trivial tasks instant, and provide more input for someone trying to improve in a field. In coding, AI is a worrying topic that has the potential to replace many humans in the industry. However, AI is only as good as its user, a user that isn’t knowledgeable in the the product they are trying to generate cannot be as good as someone good at the field.
In “Three Types of AI-assisted Programmers” by Isaac Lyman, the post covers the three types of people who can use AI in programming. Those three are someone with no coding knowledge, a junior engineer, and a senior engineer. The author covers the pros and cons of each person using AI to code and expresses the opinion that AI is a great addition to a team’s work, if they are attentive enough to the code generated. The pros and cons of the junior and senior engineer is what I want to highlight since AI could very well be integrated in future developer teams. The author mentions that junior developers should stray away from using AI in their work, as it may become a crutch. Rather than using AI to fulfill work tasks, junior developers should use AI to provide insight and examples to improve their skill set. A senior engineer, already having the fundamental code skills and knowledge, should just leverage the speed that AI can provide into streamlining basic code. By saving time from the menial code, senior engineers can put more time into delivering better features.
I thought this blog post contained valuable insight into the use of AI in coding and future development teams. The exploration of pros and cons for each category offers a valuable roadmap for future developer teams, emphasizing the need for a balanced and strategic integration of AI into the coding workflow. As AI continues to improve, it becomes clear that the use of AI, particularly for junior developers as a learning aid and senior engineers for time optimization, holds the key to coordinating between human expertise and artificial intelligence in the evolving landscape of coding.
Reference: https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/12/11/three-types-of-ai-assisted-programmers/
Leon's Blog 