this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Oh that's interesting. What areas does this push in Africa focus on?
As for dev tools, I think the verdict is still out on whether AI is actually beneficial. Being able to skip the tediousness of typing out some boilerplate can be nice, but the push to use these tools in the west is all encompassing. I've seen a lot of studies that suggests these tools are actually reducing productivity, all while lowering peoples job satisfaction. I've also noticed an increased lack of ability to read and reason about code in less experienced devs. This is a much more problematic bottleneck than the speed of writing code.
I'm not familiar with how these tools are used in China. I have to assume they take a much more pragmatic approach. The goal in the west is certainly to get these models to a place where a junior dev plus an AI tool can replace a senior dev, reducing labour costs. The reduced productivity is seen as a temporary cost to achieve this ultimate goal.
AI for coding is very useful, assuming you're already a senior dev. It allows one senior dev to replace four or five junior devs, ultimately annihilating the market for junior devs. Unlike junior devs, senior devs already know how code should run, so verifying the AI isn't an issue. Instead of senior devs having to "waste time and productivity" training junior devs, senior devs can instead spin up four or five AI agents and supervise them, commanding them to write the code and then review the code at the end.
Now, the question arises, "what will happen when these senior devs retire?" There is no answer to that. The idea is by that time, all dev work will be replaced by AI.
This logic doesn't really track in my experience. Hiring junior devs was never about writing production code. It's an investment with the understanding that a junior will develop into an intermediate and senior in the future. It generally takes more time to mentor a junior and review their code than to simply code it myself. In addition, doing it myself will certainly result in higher quality, scalable, maintainable code.
This is the contradiction. Many seniors are seeing their productivity decline, because being forced to use AI is like mentoring 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 etc. juniors. The AI doesn't improve based on your individual mentorship making this a different type of "investment", if you can even call it that. This isn't about productivity or investing in labour. It's about creating a system by which the value of your labour power can be reduced.
My point is that companies hire junior devs in order to train them into senior devs to get more in-house programming ability. Now they can just have their senior devs spin up one more AI agent, so have much less incentive to ever hire juniors.
The newer AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, new new new OpenAI Codex) are much more powerful than even just a year ago, and legitimately feel like force multipliers for senior devs. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9UxjmNF7b0 ) Unfortunately, junior devs are too junior to know how to use them to the full extent, and soon will have no job opportunities to ever learn how to become a senior dev.
The programming job market reflects this fact, and has crashed pretty hard for juniors.
I think I agree. If I'm understanding correctly, the point you're making is that AI coding tools have completely disrupted the market for junior developers, making it near impossible for them to find opportunities. I've noticed this as well.
I suppose tech leaders are hoping that by the time the existing market of senior developers begins to retire, that AI coding tools can be used by anyone, making developers redundant. For what it's worth, I think this is wrong and will be disastrous for the software industry in the long run.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: