Let's split the difference and call them "magical overeager junior developer replacements".

On a shorter timeline than you'd think none of working with these tools will look like this.

You'll be prompting and evaluating and iterating entirely finished pieces of software and be able to see multiple attempts at each solve at once, none of this deep in the weeds fixing a bug stuff.

We're rapidly approaching a world where a lot of software will be being made without an engineer hire at all, maybe not the hardest most complex or novel software but a lot of software that previously required a team of 3-15 wont have a single dev.

My current estimate is mid 2026

> So, AIs are overeager junior developers at best, and not the magical programmer replacements they are advertised as.

This may be a quick quip or a rant. But the things we say have a way of reinforcing how we think. So I suggest refining until what we say cuts to the core of the matter. The claim above is a false dichotomy. Let's put aside advertisements and hype. Trying to map between AI capabilities and human ones is complicated. There is high quality writing on this to be found. I recommend reading literature reviews on evals.

The grandparent is talking about how to control cost by focusing the tool. My response was to a comment about how that takes too much thinking.

If you give a junior an overly broad prompt, they are going to have to do a ton of searching and reading to find out what they need to do. If you give them specific instructions, including files, they are more likely to get it right.

I never said they were replacements. At best, they're tools that are incredibly effective when used on the correct type of problem with the right type of prompt.

As of April 2025. The pace is so fast that it will overtake seniors within years maybe months.