Comment by Terr_
6 days ago
> as they become experts, they prefer terse syntax.
In my experience, the man-hours of expertise may be less than you'd think: I've probably spent more hours (or at least subjective frustration) being the beginner in different things than I have spent hours being able to enjoy expertise after earning it in a language/framework/convention/tool. Sometimes it's even the same subject, years later.
I propose that catering to "beginners in language" is under-valued, since it's not the same as "new in career".
More concretely, as many as half of the users of a popular programming language will have less than four years of experience: https://entropicthoughts.com/python-programmers-experience
This is why I think the "AI agents are useless for seniors" framing is misleading.
Unless you're doing something very niche and specific, you will constantly encounter new libraries, new domains, new protocols, new things you're not that familiar with. Very few people are an expert in CORS, Postgresql query optimization, advanced Typescript generics, setting up Blue-green deployments on Kubernetes, and modeling the domain of labor union disputes in the automotive industry. It is not impossible for one software engineer to need to touch all five within a week.
AI isn't really an expert in any of them either, but if it's something you need once and expect to never need again, it can often get you past whatever hump you're facing right now.
I think it's more like "LLMs agents are especially dangerous for beginners in $X."
Those are the users who won't have (as much) necessary knowledge, unused mental-bandwidth, or "instinctive taste" to recognize things that need validation and then fact-check them.