HACKER Q&A
📣 rubslopes

How are you balancing AI coding tools with junior developers growth?


I'm a developer who wrote everything by hand for years, but now I mostly use Claude Code and only dive into the code when necessary. I can still review everything and get my hands dirty when needed. The AI augments skills I already built.

My junior developers don't have that foundation yet,but there's pressure: management already expects shorter deadlines because "AI makes development faster." So I need to push my team to be more productive, but if they rely heavily on AI tools, will they ever develop the debugging intuition that I built by struggling through problems manually? It feels like I'm asking them to learn to drive while also handing them a self-driving car.

On the other hand, LLMs really do make the team more productive, I use it a lot, and I also feel that I need to help them the adapt to modern tools.

Team leaders: how are you handling this tradeoff?


  👤 eimrine Accepted Answer ✓
He has to know well at least one programming language. Even if it is not the primary work language.