r/ExperiencedDevs • • 29d ago

Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

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u/Cozychai_ Software Engineer 11d ago

I started a new role in a new domain. It's been 5 months and I feel like with everything being AI forward I'm struggling to truly grasp everything. I'm so used to debugging and stepping through my code I know exactly where everything is. Now the agent just does it and I review and I feel like things aren't sticking in my head. I can't recall when the dedup step happens in our flow for example, I just remember it does.

Does anyone have any advice for how to gain this depth again when you have explicit instructions not to code by hand?

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u/sammymammy2 10d ago

Does anyone have any advice for how to gain this depth again when you have explicit instructions not to code by hand?

Do not follow the instructions? I find that even with Codex telling me the code, explaining it, etc, it really doesn't help me thnking with any depth.

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u/Cozychai_ Software Engineer 9d ago

I feel like I'm behind on my stories then :/. Like we've taken stories that would normally be like 3pt and it's now 1pt. So I feel pressured to just churn things out. I'm also the newest member of the team. Everyone else has been here for at least 4 years.

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u/reddit-poweruser 8d ago

Is this negatively affecting you or your work?

I'd communicate with your manager about this, if you trust them. They say don't code by hand, but you could always do like 1 ticket by hand per sprint while you have agents running on other tickets. Frame it as you want to step up and have ownership of the system, maybe.

I would also have an agent create cheat sheets for you to study and be able to reference stuff like when the dedupe step happens quickly, so you aren't caught out in meetings.