My professor told me AI would replace junior coders in 2 years

Last semester my comp sci professor said I should focus on system design because AI tools would make entry level coding jobs disappear by 2026. I brushed it off as old school thinking. But after using GitHub Copilot for my internship this summer, I can see his point. A lot of my basic debugging and boilerplate work got done by the AI in seconds. Has anyone else had a teacher give advice like this that ended up being right?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannahcraig12d ago

My old boss used to say the same thing back in 2018 and everyone laughed at him. Now half his junior team got replaced by automated testing tools.

baker.christopher12d ago

12 of the 15 selenium alternatives I looked at last quarter still can't handle complex UI flows reliably. Did those startups actually keep the cuts in place long term or did they end up rehiring for the edge cases automation couldn't catch? I keep seeing this pattern where companies brag about headcount reduction but quietly bring people back for debugging and maintenance.

abby_morgan1812d ago

wait @hannahcraig the timeline is a little off there lol. 2018 was when everyone was still saying AI was just a buzzword. the real shift happened in 2020 when those no-code testing tools actually got good enough to replace junior roles. I worked with a startup that year that cut their QA team by 60% using selenium alternatives. funny how fast things change once the tech actually works