ChatGPT and June’s fate

Due to the success of the OpenAI project called ChatGPT in the environment of teachers of programming there was a certain excitement. And it is connected with the fact that it is quite possible that soon the positions of junior programmers will now be replaced by this wonderful service, and this, in turn, means that teaching plans need to be revised in order to release middles right away.

Like any other innovation, this groundbreaking news is met with a certain amount of healthy skepticism. Let’s look at the arguments for and against the new wonderful future that awaits us all. Anyone who is interested in this topic, please under cat.

Introduction

Let’s start with who these junas are. Those who already know this well can safely move on to the next chapter. For some time now, the division into positions of juniors (junior), middles (middle) and seniors (senior) has appeared in the environment of software developers. It is assumed that jun is a beginner programmer, middle is a middle-level developer and senior is a lead (or senior) developer.

The practical difference between them is primarily in salary. If we take the average salary of a middle for a certain unit, then the payment of a junior will be one and a half to two times less. The salary of a senior developer can be from one and a half to 5 times higher than that of a middle developer. If we turn to professional requirements, then if a novice programmer, as a rule, does not require work experience, then in order to get to the middle position, you need to have 2-3 years of work experience. A senior programmer is required to already have 5-7 years of experience.

Another important parameter is the ability to work independently. It is assumed that the junior needs a curator who will constantly monitor his workflow. A middle is a person capable of solving problems independently, and only the result of his work needs to be controlled. The position of a senior already requires not only a good knowledge of development methods and tools, but also the ability to set tasks for the development team and control their implementation.

Futurochok as it is

And now, stunning news breaks into this harmonious and well-established system: juniors are no longer needed! Here is a new artificial intelligence service ChatGPT, which can generate software at the level of a novice programmer. But it does it: a) completely free, b) very fast, c) incredibly error-free. It would seem that these are killer arguments for effective managers to immediately start saving on the salaries of novice programmers, demonstrating: a) that they keep up with the times, b) achieve their goals at a lower cost, c) their efficiency is steeper than mountains.

But since each sandpiper sees only his own swamp, therefore, the author of this article is directly interested in only a very small area of ​​\u200b\u200bconsequences, namely, unrest among programming teachers, to which he refers himself to some extent.

After all, teachers also have their own management, which also wants to keep up with the times and not be left with nothing. In particular, this is expressed in the requirement to develop teaching methods that would immediately produce middles. And it sounds quite logical. If the juniors no longer find work, then they need to be re-qualified as middles. … Profit! So, you need to immediately begin … deepen … and achieve …

The fate of the Junes

But let’s take a closer look at the functions of the jun. Is he really about to be unclaimed? I will give a couple of examples from many that the author was told about by his former students and which, as he thinks, will be appropriate in this context.

In the first example, in a certain company, a strong and determined HR decided: why hire juniors? Is the company rich? Yes! Powerful? Yes! Why are we stupid? We will take only middles! As a result, at a certain stage in the history of the company, there were no juniors at all. Then, during the modernization of one of the projects, a scripting language for bots was developed. It was much more efficient than writing and, most importantly, debugging code for each bot individually. Now there is one bot that can do everything and whose code is well debugged, just write a script for it and it will do everything for you.

So, suddenly there was a production conflict: the middles, one by one, refused to write scripts for the bot. This is not a royal business! They are coders of a high professional level, and they are offered this here! The team leader asked the management to hire a junior for this job, but alas, we look at the initial data of the task given above. Outcome: endless conflicts, missed deadlines.

What a conclusion suggests itself here: a junior is not only a low-paid and insufficiently experienced employee, he is also an employee who performs work in the project, the assignment of which to more “important” persons would lead to an industrial conflict.

And here is another life option for using June. The young specialist was attached to a venerable developer. He began to use him as a batman. Bring this, buy this. Take it away, clean it up. The young talent was outraged. This is not what he prepared for when he learned to code well! There was an industrial dispute. The venerable developer got the June fired with the wording “for refusing to perform assigned tasks.” New June didn’t dare to object.

Learn new?

Now let’s move from particulars to the general. A middle becomes a middle after working as a junior for 2-3 years and gaining experience. If you exclude this link from the chain, then where will the new middles come from? According to some circles of management courses in programming – from the new curriculum. But the training program is already producing graduates. The only thing they lack is experience.

Following the logic of management, perhaps workshops should be organized in which real projects would be developed. To keep deadlines burning, there would be swearing and threats at meetings, so that students would not sleep at night in search of bugs. Is it possible? Technically – of course yes, but organizationally?

Will there be those who want to give the project to student development? Maybe there will be, they can theoretically be attracted by an incredibly low development price. But then the courses will also have to be attributed to the marketing department, which will look for projects for students. Will the students themselves stay up at night and do a project under the guidance of teachers? At work, they would do it for money and under the threat of being fired and losing their careers. On courses – they will pay for it. All this looks somehow doubtful.

conclusions

Let’s summarize. According to the author of this article, June is more of a social phenomenon than a professional one, and the emergence of a new and so far free service that can code will not change anything in the development environment. Therefore, the change in the paradigm of teaching programming still looks premature.

But the author does not consider himself infallible in his judgments and will gladly listen to the opinions of colleagues and simply interested persons in the comments. So, what do you think about this? Please justify your opinion.

Important note: All illustrations are made with ChatGPT. Do not rush to rejoice that it is still too early for illustrators to retire. ChatGPT is a text model and drawing is not his profile skill, which he honestly warned the author about. The illustrations are based on the titles and texts of the chapters. Why AI expressed itself in such an artistic way is probably the topic of at least a separate article.