Does generative AI level the playing field between a junior and an experienced developer? Or does experience matter more than ever? To get a real-world perspective, we sat down with two Nashville Software School (NSS) graduates now working together at Purity Health: Ripal Patel, an alum of Web Development Evening Cohort 8 and developer with five years of experience, and Drew Goodman, a 2024 graduate from Web Development Cohort 70. They share their perspectives on climbing the agentic AI learning curve, from their initial fears about AI to how it's already changing their daily workflows 02:08 - Meet Ripal: From Healthcare to Software Development 05:18 - Ripal's Initial Hesitation About AI 08:02 - Meet Drew: From Finance to a New Career in Tech 09:41 - Drew's Experience in a Slower Job Market 14:46 - Ripal's View: Did Experience Help in the AI Class? 18:10 - Drew's View: AI, Experience, and the Power to 'Screw Things Up' 19:37 - Aha Moment: 'It's Not Gonna Take My Job' 22:09 - How AI Changes the Developer Workflow: More Time Reviewing 23:41 - How AI Helps Junior Devs: More Time for System-Level Learning 26:09 - Key Mental Skill for AI: Breaking Down Big Tasks 30:33 - How is AI Different from Stack Overflow for Learning? 33:35 - Using AI to Learn a New Tech Stack on the Fly 36:04 - Workflow Breakdown: Agentic Mode vs. Ask Mode 40:29 - Using Guardrails and Instructions to Keep AI Consistent 44:53 - The NSS Mindset: 'Learning How to Learn' 46:41 - Advice for Experienced, Hesitant Developers 47:38 - Advice for Junior Developers Using AI 49:41 - Recommended Resources 52:07 - Tech Guilty Pleasures LINKS: Purity Health: https://www.purity-health.com/ Nashville Software School: https://nashvillesoftwareschool.com Should Startups Hire Junior Developers in the Age of AI? | Stories From The Hackery with David Andrews and Fletcher Watson of Purity Health: https://learn.nashvillesoftwareschool.com/blog/2025/10/29/should-startups-hire-junior-developers-in-the-age-of-ai-stories-from-the-hackery Agentic AI Tools GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot Cursor: https://cursor.com Anthropic's Claude: https://www.anthropic.com/claude Community & Learning Resources Nashville Data Nerds: https://www.meetup.com/data-nerds/ FreeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/ Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/ Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/