Aren't you forgetting that they need to eat? Pay rent?

We are not in the 1930s.

If you have made it to the point of being a Junior Developer, I can assure you food and shelter is not a problem for them. You just have to adjust to a standard of living like the other 7 Billion people on this world.

Also, if a Junior Developer can show me(or anyone) they have built an entire system on their own and explain key concepts, there is no dearth of jobs for them

This feels like a truism that's easier said than done. In fact, I know someone in that position. They've built things from scratch, they understand things at a deep conceptual level... Oh and they're a math prodigy. How do I refer them to you?

LinkedIn. Our recruiter will contact them /s

Nope, they won't. Recruiters look for keywords and companies on your resume. If someone has built something as a personal project that doesn't count for squat.

If he is really as good as you say, you can literally ask Claude as to how to go about getting visibility.

It's just a search problem now.

> There is nothing preventing Junior Developers to develop their own systems and understand it.

Eh? Apart from it not being what they are paid to do on their 9/9/6 jobs, when will they have the time to make it happen?

What is going to happen is that the remnants of the open source community will do the job of educating juniors for free, when the university degree system collapses. Just like it currently keeps a bunch of systems going with inadequate compensation.

The corporate world gets the problem off its balance sheet. Again.

The argument you respond to here is "it is impossible for anyone to be Junior Software Engineer because AI". That is a straw-man.

The actual argument is "there will be no jobs for Junior Engineers, so there will be far fewer, and as a result there will be a huge shortage of Senior Software Engineers".

You are responding to the problem as if it some kind of extinction event, like a rare bird, where if we can find a breeding population we save the day. A few curious people, self training for the love of the game, and as a result we still have a few Software Engineers so everything is fine. It is not like that, and I haven't heard anyone suggest that is the issue. The potential problem is a massive shortage of workers with skills that are currently essential to the functioning of a large fraction of the economy, whom we might still need in the future.

The continued existence of talented enthusiasts does not establish an adequate workforce pipeline. If paid entry level experience contracts, what replaces it, and why should we expect that replacement to operate at sufficient scale?

If there is a market demand, skills will find a way, especially in non-regulated industries like Software Engineering with $0 barriers to entry and no government certification

The market very often fails to solve problems until after some kind of huge collapse or failure. Will this problem be around in 200 years? No. Does that mean we should follow your advice and just shut up and not talk about it or try to avoid some kind of major market inefficiency due to short sighted macroeconomic planning? No.