AI can write your code. But can it make you a better developer? Junior developers today ship faster than ever, but many struggle with the skills that matter most: debugging, collaborating, thinking through hard problems, and growing into the kind of people who carry open-source projects forward. This session shares real lessons from mentoring dozens of junior developers, and asks a question every team and every community needs to face.

Prerequisite

No technical knowledge is needed. This session is for anyone who works with developers, hires developers, mentors developers, or cares about the future of open-source communities. Whether you lead a team of two or a department of two hundred, the challenges we discuss will be familiar.

Target Audience

Team leads, development managers, and mentors who work with junior developers every day. Agency owners and hiring managers who are trying to figure out how to grow talent when AI changes everything. Community members and organizers who want more people contributing to Drupal and worry about where the next generation will come from. No matter your role, if you care about people in open source, this session is for you.

Outline

AI tools help developers write code faster. But writing code is only a small part of what makes someone a good developer. Problem-solving, teamwork, clear communication, taking ownership... these skills take time to grow. AI can't teach them.

At Agiledrop, a 70+ engineer company, we mentor junior developers through a structured onboarding that lasts 1–3 months. Over time, we noticed something worrying. Juniors who leaned too hard on AI tools learned less deeply. They skipped the struggle that builds real understanding. They asked AI before asking their team. They lost the joy of solving something on their own.

This session shares what we learned and how we changed our mentoring. We talk about what works: real projects, real mentors, real conversations. We also talk about what doesn't work: copy-paste coding, skipping documentation, and treating AI as a senior colleague.

This matters beyond any single company. New developers today don't start with Drupal. They reach for whatever AI suggests. If we want Drupal to have a future, we need people who understand it deeply, not just people who can prompt their way through it. That means investing in mentorship, in community, and in the slow, human work of growing developers who care.

This is not an anti-AI talk. AI is here to stay. But tools don't build communities. People do.

Learning Objectives

1. Understand why the skills that make a great developer (problem-solving, communication, ownership, teamwork) cannot be built through AI tools alone
2. Learn a practical onboarding approach tested across dozens of junior developers at a 70+ person engineering company
3. Recognize the early signs that a junior developer is relying on AI in ways that slow their real growth
4. See how junior developer mentorship connects directly to the health and future of open-source communities like Drupal

Experience level
Anyone