> A junior developer has no such skills. Their only approach will be to run the code, test whether it fulfills the requirements, and, if they're thorough, try to understand and test it to the best of their abilities.
This is also a supremely bad take... well, really it's mainly the way you worded it that's bad. Juniors have skills, natural aptitudes, as much intelligence on average as other programmers, and often even some experience but what they lack is work history. They sure as hell are capable of understanding code rather than just running it. Yes, of course experience is immensely useful, most especially at understanding how to achieve a maintainable and reliable codebase in the longterm, which is obviously of special importance, but long experience is not a hard requirement. You can reason about trade offs, learn from advice, learn quickly, etc.
You're right, that was harshly worded. I meant to contrast it with the capability of making a quality assessment of the generated output, and understanding how and what to change, if necessary. This is something that only experts in any field are capable of. I didn't mean to imply that people lacking experience are incapable of attaining these skills, let alone that they're less intelligent. It's just that the field is positioned against them in a way that they might never reach this level. Some will, but it will be much harder for most. This wouldn't be an issue if these new tools were infallible, but we're far from that stage.
"AI" tools are most useful in the hands of experienced developers, not juniors. It's seniors who have the knowledge and capability to review the generated output, and decide whether the code will cause more issues when it's merged, or if it's usable if they tweak and adapt it in certain ways.
A junior developer has no such skills. Their only approach will be to run the code, test whether it fulfills the requirements, and, if they're thorough, try to understand and test it to the best of their abilities. Chances are that because they're pressured to deliver as quickly as possible to impress their colleagues and managers, they'll just accept whatever working solution the tool produces the first time.
This makes "AI" in the hands of junior developers risky and counterproductive. Companies that allow this type of development will quickly grind to a halt under the weight of technical debt, and a minefield of bugs they won't know how to maneuver around.
The unfortunate reality is that with "AI" there is no pathway for junior developers to become senior. Most people will gravitate towards using these tools as a crutch for quickly generating software, and not as a learning tool to improve their own skills. This should concern everyone vested in the future of this industry.