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Overheard a junior dev say 'I just use ChatGPT' and it made me pause
I was grabbing coffee last week near the office kitchen here in Austin and heard this kid straight up say he doesn't bother learning syntax anymore because the AI handles it. In my experience, that kind of shortcut can bite you when you're debugging at 2 AM. Has anyone else seen new hires lean too hard on tools without knowing the basics first?
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rowan213d ago
Oh boy, I'm gonna come at this from the other side. @brian_ramirez I get your point about the IKEA thing, but honestly I think we're overreacting a bit here. These junior devs grew up in a world where tools handle the boring stuff, just like we grew up with spell check and calculators. Nobody expects a mechanic to forge their own wrenches, and expecting new devs to memorize everything is kind of old school thinking. The real skill is knowing what to ask the AI and how to verify what it gives you, not reciting syntax from memory.
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The whole "I just use ChatGPT" thing reminds me of when my buddy tried to assemble IKEA furniture using only the AI assistant and ended up with a bookshelf that looked like modern art. Idk, maybe it's just me but you gotta know what the tools are actually doing under the hood.
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