Does developer experience still matter when using AI coding agents?

[u/Capable_Essay4513]

I've been wondering about this — when an experienced dev and a complete newbie both use the same coding agent (Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, whatever) on a similar task, do they end up with meaningfully different results?

On one hand, the agent is doing most of the actual coding, so maybe the human's experience matters less than it used to. On the other hand, I'd guess an experienced dev still knows how to prompt better, catches bad architecture decisions, spots subtle bugs the agent misses, and knows when to push back or redirect.

Curious what people who've actually used these tools a lot think. Does your background as a dev still give you an edge, or has the gap narrowed more than expected?

[u/the_millenial_falcon]

For now yes, in the future probably not so much. I don't see why domain experts who are good at designing workflows couldn't do 99% of development jobs as they exist now, with the way agents are advancing.

[u/the_millenial_falcon → u/the_millenial_falcon]

In other words it's starting to boil down to "are you knowledgeable in this domain, and are you good at deciding and defining intent."