They wrote "You still need to do a lot of work to get it production ready". So I would say it's not much better than real colleagues. Especially since junior devs will improve to a point they don't need your hand holding (remember you also were a junior at some point), which is not proven will happen with AI tools.
Counter-point A: AI coding assistance tools are rapidly advancing at a clip that is inarguably faster than humans.
Counter-point B: AI does not get tired, does not need space, does not need catering to their experience. AI is fine being interrupted and redirected. AI is fine spending two days on something that gets overwritten and thrown away (no morale loss).
Counter-counter-point A: If I work with a human Junior and they make an error or I familiarize them with any quirk of our workflow, and I correct them, they will recall that correction moving forward. An AI assistant either will not remember 5 minutes later (in a different prompt on a related project) and repeat the mistake, or I'll have to take the extra time to code some reminder into the system prompt for every project moving forward.
Advancements in general AI knowledge over time will not correlate to improvements in remembering any matters as colloquial as this.
Counter-counter-point B: AI absolutely needs catering to their experience. Prompter must always learn how to phrase things so that the AI will understand them, adjust things when they get stuck in loops by removing confusing elements from the prompt, etc.
I find myself thinking about juniors vs AI as babies vs cats. A cat is more capable sooner, you can trust it when you leave the house for two hours, but it'll never grow past shitting in a box and needing to be fed.
> If I work with a human Junior and they make an error or I familiarize them with any quirk of our workflow, and I correct them, they will recall that correction moving forward
I really wish that were the case. Most of the Jr Engineers I work with have to be told the same thing multiple times, in different ways, for things to stick.
There's going to be a limit though. Plus you have to instruct them correctly.
B. Yea, that's true. I used to have over 4,000 GitHub contributions a year and it dropped to 1,000 as I got older and managed people. I used to be able to work 48 hrs straight but can't as much anymore...but you still have to be there to instruct the AI agent. It can't do it all on its own.
