Senior devs, no. Junior devs? Uh...
I've been seeing the same thing Steve Yegge has with AI. It could very well replace all of the grunt work in software engineering.
I've been seeing the same thing Steve Yegge has with AI. It could very well replace all of the grunt work in software engineering.
Maybe I’m just fortunate, but most places I’ve worked the difference between jr and senior has been the scope they owned and the amount of time spent architecting/reviewing/mentoring vs heads down coding. Seniors are not just handing off grunt work to juniors.
I do the hard work of software Eng away from my computer, trying to think clearly about the problem(s).
I'm fairly worried that AI as it is developing now is going to be the most effective ladder pull in the world. While a new dev is grappling with "grunt work", they're learning. I'm working with them, explaining why this was done and why that was done, and why, yeah, that's busted, but actually not for the reason you think, and they're learning a lot more than just how to accomplish the specific task nominally laid out in the specific ticket they are working on. If they do the work by just asking an LLM for the answer and they actually get it, they may finish the task today... but what of their progress in five years? Ten? I'm very concerned that juniors leaning on AI will discover that in five years, the easy stuff is still easy, but the hard stuff is still as incomprehensible as it was five years ago.
You do realize that SAML has been around for a long time? If anything what you want is an executive to tell everyone to use SAML rather than a "senior architect".
An executive can certainly issue the mandate but the project to make it happen is going to be a very detailed one.
It's a good project to do. There shouldn't be 250 ways of doing authentication. Authorization is rather difficult to just wave a magic wand and harmonize, but authentication shouldn't be a cookie here, and a JWT token there, and a microservice with its own tokens that also integrate with some vital system over there, and Basic Auth with LDAP creds over there, and so on.
But the project is going to be a lot more than just standing in a room and shouting "HEY EVERYONE USE SAML, ok, cool, project is now spec'd, timelined, prioritized, and staffed problem solved".
Of course many organizations don't like the whole 'training' people thing anymore so it's rough for junior devs out there. Good for my career since I can demand a premium since the pool of experienced engineers will only go down over time, but ultimately bad for software as a whole.