Hiring managers often put out ads like this: “Looking for a senior Python developer with at least 6 years of experience.” I get it – hiring can be risky, and undoing a wrong hire is expensive and messy. But by equating ability solely with years of experience, the manager is betting that, over those 6 years, the developer’s mind has neatly accumulated and organized enough concepts and theories about Python to be useful. That’s conceptual learning.

On the other hand, experimental learning is more about the development and expression of one’s natural potential and skills. This is where generative AI coding assistants are proving to be game-changers.

With a curious and meticulous mindset, a developer with, say, 2 years of experience, working alongside a coding assistant, can produce elegant solutions that are not just a rehash of code snippets that worked in the past. Instead, they’re driven by a genuine curiosity about the problem and how best to solve it. Coincidentally the Financial Times reported this week that the education non-profit Code.org will “stop hiring people who code without AI by the end of the year”.

There’s a place for both types of learning, and the best developers will leverage both. So, if you don’t have the requisite number of years mentioned in a job ad, don’t be discouraged. And if you do, don’t get complacent – there’s always much more to learn and new tools to explore.