AI, as of late, is taking the blame for making junior developers “worse” at writing code, but in my 20 years of experience—junior devs have always struggled to code well. Well being the keyword. It’s not a new problem. The difference? AI is just simply just highlighting the fact.

For decades, junior devs have relied on Stack Overflow, online tutorials, and helpful senior engineers to guide them in their day to day work. AI tools like Copilot aren’t replacing deep learning—they’re just streamlining what has always been a part of the learning process.

Before the time of A.I.

I started coding before Stack Overflow existed. Back then, we had 10-20lb textbooks, binders full of half-legible notes, and forums where getting an answer could take days.

In 2003, this was the way. And for the most part, we made it work. You weren’t going to become the #1 ranked programmer in the world overnight, but you were going to learn about algorithms, data structures, operating systems, and a bit of SQL (a bit).

Then Stack Overflow came along—and guess what? It faced the same scrutiny that AI tools are facing today. Developers were supposedly getting lazy. Universities banned it. People claimed it would make engineers worse because they didn’t have to struggle as much to find answers.

Did enforced struggle make better developers?

Maybe. It’s hard to say. And honestly, whatever my feelings are on the subject might be way too subjective to define all developers.

But I will say this—even with all that “pure” learning, I was still a terrible junior developer.

And nobody I worked with was surprised or resented me for it. Because that’s just how learning works.

Companies don't normally give 20 million dollar projects to the new guy who struggled to configure his dev environment. That takes time and alot of trust.

Once I entered the corporate workforce though StackOverflow was everywhere. It was refreshing that we didn't have to read 10 year old forums written in a different language in order to find out how to use a function properly.

Did reading StackOverflow daily make me a better developer? Did it make me worse, because I was relying on somewhat opiniated answers? I don't know. Maybe the answer is a bit of both.

But the fact is, I normally just copy and pasted whatever answer I found and modified it until it worked for my use case. As did many of the other developers surrounding me.

The goal wasn't to master a programming language at the end of the day. It was to check off our to-do lists for the week and hope that we worked well enough to provide some value.

The role of senior engineers

For the first five years of my career, I relied heavily on the guidance of senior developers. Not just because they could code better than me—though they definitely could—but because that was only one part of the equation.

They had experience. They had done things with code that I was never asked to do in college or in any tutorial. And when it came down to actually getting my work done, that’s what I was missing.

I still remember the first time I had to remote log into a Linux server to configure some obscure network parameters for a website migration.

I was two years into my career. I had never remote logged into anything. The acronyms my manager was throwing at me might as well have been an ancient language. And my only response was "You got it!".

Lucky for me, a senior developer was sitting two feet behind me. He walked me through the entire process, step by step, after he saw me sweating in my chair for 2 hours.

And this pattern repeated itself alot through my early years.

There were even days where high priority tasks were due within hours, and my lead developer would take the chair, start typing at lightning speed, all while dictating their every move. While I sat there confused wishing the clock would strike 12pm.

All to say, that whether you're using StackOverflow, ChatGPT, Copilot or a forum post from 2001, it's all the same thing. It's a tool to help you get some task done.

The real learning and experience really comes from repetition and from the person sitting 3 feet away that's done what you've never done, and that will gladly take their time and show you the way.

Is A.I. Hurting or Helping More

I think the answer to that question depends entirely on the developer using it and what their goals are.

Not every developer wants to memorize every search algorithm, data structure, or encryption cipher. Many just want to build cool things, to the best of their ability, while earning a paycheck.

And that’s fine.

The truth is, AI doesn’t make bad developers worse—it just exposes gaps that were always there. A good developer will use AI as a tool to accelerate learning, automate the tedious, and improve efficiency. A bad developer will copy-paste blindly, just like they always have, whether from AI or Stack Overflow.

The difference between the two? Experience. Curiosity. A willingness to learn.

AI won’t replace real-world experience. It won’t teach you why something works or save you from a debugging nightmare at 2 AM. And it definitely won’t replace the senior engineer sitting next to you, showing you how things actually get done.

So is AI hurting or helping?

That’s not up to the tool. That’s up to the developer.