Azeem Azhar

So experienced developers were much more likely to ask the AI to help them plan before starting coding.

So they were going to ask for the AI to do that architectural work with them.

And then they were more likely to accept the code that was presented.

Whereas junior developers were much more likely to go straight into implementation.

And if you've worked with developers before, if you've written software before, you know that thinking through your plan is a surefire way to get the project done more quickly.

I mean, if you literally just pop open your code editor and start typing, that's probably a recipe for mangled code, lots of bug fixes and late nights.

And so in a sense, what it's showing is that where the experienced workers are benefiting is that they have better mental models of both the code base of what they want to do and how AI can help them.

And what's happening there is agents are shifting programming from typing syntax.

And, you know, that was my downfall is when I used to develop in Java, I would always get my syntax slightly wrong, specifying the semantics.

And so the new skills that are needed are abstraction and clarity and evaluation.

You need to know what to ask for, how to ask precisely, how to judge what comes back.

And if you've been reading exponential view, you'll recognize those ideas.

We've talked about the importance of developing those types of skills in the workplace as AI systems become more prevalent and more capable.

So a senior developer spent years communicating intent to their junior colleagues and sitting down and evaluating code.

You know, the senior developer would sit down next to the junior developer and say, hey, what did you work on this week?

Talk me through something you coded and why you chose the approach you did.

It turns out that those are exactly the skills that seem to matter for effective AI delegation.

What does that tell us about how productivity might show up in development teams?

Well, perhaps it's not just the number of developers who have access to Cursor or Replit or any of these other things, GitHub Copilot, but rather it's also about the quality of those developers that will drive the productivity uplifts.

So while I was researching for this, I found another great example.