Ask HN: How do you balance GenAI productivity with learning as a junior/mid dev?

3 pointsby whizusukitevor 9 Monaten1 comments

I’m in my early-mid career, and I’m struggling to balance between the benefits of playing with agentic coding tools now and losing fundamentals of coding.

It feels like senior engineers gained their skills through hands-on programming, and while these new tools can be powerful for those who learn to use them well, I sometimes struggle to balance keeping up with productivity while feeling like I’m missing out on deeper learning.

Any suggestions on how to balance between these two at this point? Would love to hear both povs!

1 comments

davydmvor 9 Monaten

yes - stop chasing the "productivity"

producing more code is not the same as being more productive

producing more working features that your users actually want and squashing bugs so that they have confidence in the product is productivity

good senior engineers should appreciate that an entry/junior (or even mid) dev may not "produce" as much - and should be helping you to upskill

producing large amounts of trash code that someone has to review and ultimately fix is not productivity - many "ai-first" companies are starting to learn that

so I'd suggest: focus on your craft, on the basic principles, but also the niches and the interesting bits. Find a part of it that you enjoy, that you're good at - preferably even outstandingly good at - and keep going.