Cultivating Judgment in an Agent-First World

Helping Junior Devs Grow in a World of Instant Answers

Agents are beginning to reshape how we build software. We haven’t broken cleanly into that new paradigm yet, but it’s coming. The complexity juniors used to grow through—trade-off discussions, failed first approaches, awkward in-progress code (which I still write)—risks being hidden behind a polished AI-generated answer. If all they see is the final output, I worry they’ll miss the substrate where judgment used to form.

Judgment isn’t just about spotting bugs or bad smells. It’s learning to weigh one option against another, to see why one solution fits better than the rest, and why certain shortcuts backfire (sometimes spectacularly!). That tends to happen in the messy middle. The part where you spin your wheels before asking for help. That hasn’t evaporated overnight. It’s not gone yet. But it is something we should watch for. It’s a practice ground at risk of being lost. And we need to be sure something equally as useful fills its space.

We have to consciously bring juniors along for this new ride. A ride, in a way, that we’re juniors on! So let’s share our thinking, our tradeoffs, our uncertainty. In this new world where answers are instant, experience becomes harder to acquire. But it is not impossible. We just have to be deliberate.

Let’s be deliberate. Let’s ensure everyone can come along with us.