Hi, I'm Anand, your host on Tech-ah Pesuvom, Kaasa Purinjupom. Know the tech, learn about money. In Tamil, with English tech words.

In this episode I ask one question: does AI affect the learning curve of freshers, or not?

I came to this question after DevFest, where I spoke with many students and developers. Today a fresher can ask an AI coding agent such as Claude or Codex to build a whole project, and the output comes quickly. But are the basics, the syntax, the architecture and the system design still being learned? To find out, I spoke first with students, who are living this right now, and then with working professionals, who gave their suggestions and solutions.

STUDENTS (the first 28 minutes)

• Mithin and Yassar, college juniors of Dhanush Kandhan, who take part in hackathons: how they use AI agents in projects and hackathons, learning versus shipping the output, and what they feel they are missing.
• Meenakshi Ganesan, a final-year student with internship experience (QA, and an AI internship at L&T Technology Services): deadlines in industry, trusting the AI output without checking it, and going back to the basics.

PROFESSIONALS (the last 12 minutes): suggestions and solutions

• Dhanush Kandhan is my friend and mentor, a former intern at Google and NVIDIA, runs his own SaaS product and had an opportunity as a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. His advice for freshers: learn the fundamentals first, then use AI to learn faster; after a task is done with AI, spend time to understand it and document it; and remember that you are responsible for everything the AI produces.
• Somasundaram Mahesh has about 10 years of experience as an Android developer and software engineer, has worked at companies including Qube Cinema and Disney+ Hotstar, is a Google Developer Groups organizer and is now a founding engineer at an AI startup. His advice for freshers: keep asking the AI "why" (why this framework, why this method, what else could be used), because your judgement is your value, and the work of the future is to guide AI at a higher level.

IN THIS EPISODE

• 0:08 My introduction and the question
• 7:50 Mithin and Yassar
• 26:50 Meenakshi
• 36:14 Dhanush Kandhan
• 42:22 Somasundaram Mahesh
• 48:43 My closing thoughts

Thank you to every guest for their time and honest views. Guests' views are their own. This is an educational discussion, not career or investment advice.

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