u/thegavin

I'm not a luddite I should say straight away, after all I work in tech, and I would like to think of myself as someone quite open to new technologies, new ways of doing things, etc. I've been programming since I was 11 I think, and working in the industry since about 2013 (so not too long, but not a short stretch either).

The company I am in has been the same company since 2013, but it is no longer "the same company". When I joined fresh out of college I thought I knew everything about programming, after all I got a pretty decent GPA. But within my first week working with real world, enterprise codebases I realised I hadn't a fucking clue. The codebase was 20 years old, mainly C/C++ with Java modules accounting for about 40% of the codebase, with the engineering hope that we could begin transitioning over more to Java. I remember getting my first task which was to look at a core dump and release a patch. I remember hearing those words and thinking "I'm a Java developer, and I did a C++ module, if they ask me to write a linked list I can do that, but this...?"

So of course I asked my assigned buddy (a junior developer who was a graduate the previous year) and he showed me the ropes, on how to read a core dump, how to attach a debugger and create a patch, test and release.

This trend continued during my first year, learning these things we weren't necessarily taught in college but necessary for working in the industry. I remember the day I first learned to attach a debugger from my IDE to a remotely deployed version of the codebase and stepping through the code, directly in my IDE, and seeing the live values, seeing where the issues might be, instead of relying on log outputs.

When I was there over a year a new cohort of grads joined and I was able to repay my dues and pass on what I learned to my assigned grad. It was fulfilling and enjoyable, being able to help them out, almost like an apprenticeship. Then the cycle would continue and those grads would be the next in line to teach. Eventually the juniors became the seniors, and the seniors moved either to upper management or retired, but fresh blood was always replenishing the old, and the skills and knowledge were retained.

I look around now and I don't see any of that in where I work. Seniors are moving on, the guys who know where the skeletons are hidden aren't able to pass on their knowledge because there's no questions coming. No one is nagging them for information, or sitting beside them to learn, because there is no need. What I see is newer folk receiving tickets, popping the ask into our designated AI of choice and asking it to break down the ask, and then pointing the AI agent to the relevant repo and asking it to perform the work.

There is no understanding of the tickets, no finding out where the pain points are, no reading up on the old codebase "lore" to see where the dragons might be. If I asked a junior now to attach a debugger to a running process they would look at me like I had 2 heads.

I know I sound like a curmudgeon, or anti-AI, I'm not! I think it's a great tool. But I'm afraid for the newer generation not getting the same attention they deserve in growing their own skills.

Has anyone else experienced or felt this?