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Comment by Quarrelsome | Hacker News Reader

10x is a meme in our industry that relates to developer productivity and I think it well reflects the sort of productivity gain that someone would be "nuts" to be skeptical about. You might not have specifically said "10x" but I imagine many people left your article believing that agentic AI is the "next 10x" productivity boost.

They used it 25 times in their piece and in your piece stated that being interested in "the craft" is something people should do in their own time from now on. Strongly implying, if not outright stating; that the processes and practices we've refined for the past 70 years of software engineering need to move aside for the next hotness that has only been out for 6 months. Sure you never said "10x", but to me it read entirely like you're doing the "10x" dance. It was a good article and it definitely has inspired me to check it out.

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No. There's all sorts of software engineering craft that usually has no place on the job site; for instance, there's a huge amount of craft in learning pure-functional languages like Haskell, but nobody freaks out when their teams decide people can't randomly write Haskell code instead of the Python and Rust everyone else is writing. You're extrapolating because you're trying to defend your point, but the point you're trying to make is that I meant to communicate something in my own article that I not only never said, but also find repellant.

Sure, I'm extrapolating what I read as strong language in your article as being a direct attack on making the code precise and flexible over good enough to ship (mediocre code, first-pass, etc). I imagine this might continue to be a battleground as adoption increases, especially at orgs with less engineering culture, in order to drive down costs and increase agentic throughput.

However there is a bit of irony in that you're happy to point out my defensiveness as a potential flaw when you're getting hung up on nailing down the "10x" claim with precision. As an enjoyer of both articles I think this one is a fair retort to yours, so I think it a little disappointing to get distracted by the specifics.

If only we could accurately measure 1x developer productivity, I imagine the truth might be a lot clearer.

Again, as you've acknowledged, there's a whole meme structure in the industry about what a "10x" programmer is. I did not claim that LLMs turn programmers into "10x programmers", because I do not believe in "10x" programmers to begin with. I'm not being defensive, I'm rebutting a (false) factual claim. It's very clearly false; you can just read the piece and see for yourself.

> I'm not being defensive, I'm rebutting a (false) factual claim.

You're rebutting a claim about your rant that -if it ever did exist- has been backed away from and disowned several times.

From [0]

> > Wait, now you're saying I set the 10x bar? No, I did not.

> I distinctly did not say that. I said your article was one of the ones that made me feel anxious. And it's one of the ones that spurred me to write this article.

and from [1]

> I'm trying to write a piece to comfort those that feel anxious about the wave of articles telling them they aren't good enough, that they are "standing still", as you say in your article. That they are crazy. Your article may not say the word 10x, but it makes something extremely clear: you believe some developers are sitting still and others are sipping rocket fuel. You believe AI skeptics are crazy. Thus, your article is extremely natural to cite when talking about the origin of this post.

[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44799049>

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44804434>

Thanks for this. The guy really wants to pin me on the 10x thing coming from him but I keep saying it's not and he keeps ignoring me. The claims of his article are extremely plain and clear: AI-loving engineers are going "rocket fuel" fast, AI skeptical engineers are crazy (literally the title!) and are sitting still.

My post is about how those types of claims are unfounded and make people feel anxious unnecessarily. He just doesn't want to confront that he wrote an article that directly says these words and that those words have an effect. He wants to use strong language without any consequences. So he's trying to nitpick the things I say and ignore my requests for further information. It's kinda sad to watch, honestly.

Yeah, I don't know what's up with him. I'll feel very foolish if he was always this nuts. If something has happened (or crept up on him) somewhat-recently to drive him berserk, then my heart goes out to him and those who know and/or care about him.

Speaking of his rant, in it, he says this:

> [Google's] Gemini’s [programming skill] floor is higher than my own.

which, man... if that's not hyperbole, either he hasn't had much experience with the worst Gemini has to offer, or something really bad has happened to him. Gemini's floor is "entirely-gormless junior programmer". If a guy who's been consistently shipping production software since the mid-1990s isn't consistently better than that, something is dreadfully wrong.

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