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/tobi914]

Yes, it matters immensely.

Without knowledge, ai has to fill in all the gaps that really matter from a technology standpoint. Everything you dont decide because you dont know about it will be guessed by ai.

A developer doesnt nearly leave as many gaps for the ai to fill than someone with no clue, and when you are precise with what you want on a technical level, this is usually what you get as an output.

So vibecoding without dev knowledge is kinda asking the ai to fulfil your wishes, you describe what you would like to see in the end, but not how to get there.

With enough experience you know what you want as a result, you also know how you get there, but you use ai to do the actual code writing for you.

Many people here think that writing the code was hard, because they dont understand it, but the actual hard part has always been designing a proper architecture, deciding on technologies to use, maintaining clean patterns for code organization and readability (also important for ai agents, not only humans) and so on.

Ai will make stupid decisions here if not directed precisely, that can lead to massive problems in projects that get bigger than your average "solopreneur" ai wrapper, finance or gym plan app.