When I talk to developers in stable, more senior roles, I keep noticing the same thing: many haven’t had time to properly try AI coding tools. If you’re a junior who’s spent the last few months experimenting, you may have more hands-on AI experience than they do.
The reasons have nothing to do with senior developers being slow or stubborn. They come down to time and a kind of caution that I think is well placed.
I talk about this, along with more advice for junior developers, in this community video:
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A Full-Time Job Leaves Little Room to Experiment
Picture a developer who’s been at the same company for eight years. Their days are full of code reviews and a migration that’s three sprints behind. At nine in the evening, they’re not going to install three coding agents and compare how each one handles the same refactoring, and that’s fair. They’ve earned their evenings off.
There’s an emotional side, too. When you’ve spent years honing a skill, a tool that promises to do the work for you can feel like something scary scratching at the door, waiting to take your job. Unless AI sparks your curiosity, why invite it in after hours?
Their experience pays off once they do start. When an assistant generates a database migration, an experienced developer is much more likely to spot the operation that would lock a busy table.
Read the full article at https://realpython.com/junior-developers-ahead-on-ai/ »
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