Steve Yegge makes the prediction in Revenge of the junior developer that this current wave of AI “agents” that help us code with more capability than just type ahead suggestions and refactorings, like file creation, command line usage, and more, is just the fourth wave of six. The fifth is an individual developer managing multiple agents (a “cluster”) which gives way to “fleets” of agents in the sixth.
The revenge part? Junior developers, less stuck in their ways, will be quicker to adapt to these new ways of working. I think it’s interesting to think about, but my experience, the value of someone who deeply knows how to understand a system and fix and prevent problems, traits that define a senior developer, will remain as valuable as ever.