Hacker News Reader

Comment by malfist | Hacker News Reader

This article bases its argument on the predicate that AI _at worst_ will increase developer productivity be 0-10%. But several studies have found that not to be true at all. AI can, and does, make some people less effective

View on HN

There's also the more insidious gap between perceived productivity and actual productivity. Doesn't help that nobody can agree on how to measure productivity even without AI.

"AI can, and does, make some people less effective"

So those people should either stop using it or learn to use it productively. We're not doomed to live in a world where programmers start using AI, lose productivity because of it and then stay in that less productive state.

If managers are convinced by stakeholders who relentlessly put out pro-"AI" blog posts, then a subset of programmers can be forced to at least pretend to use "AI".

They can be forced to write in their performance evaluation how much (not if, because they would be fired) "AI" has improved their productivity.

Both (1) "AI can, and does, make some people less effective" and (2) "the average productivity boost (~20%) is significant" (per Stanford's analysis) can be true.

The article at the link is about how to use AI effectively in complex codebases. It emphasizes that the techniques described are "not magic", and makes very reasonable claims.

the techniques described sound like just as much work, if not more, than just writing the code. the claimed output isn't even that great, it's comparable to the speed you would expect a skilled engineer to move at in a startup environment

> the techniques described sound like just as much work, if not more, than just writing the code.

That's very fair, and I believe that's true for you and for many experienced software developers who are more productive than the average developer. For me, AI-assisted coding is a significant net win.

I tend to think about it like vim - you will feel slow and annoyed for the first few weeks, but investing in these skills are massive +EV long term

Yet a lot of people never bother to learn vim, and are still outstanding and productive engineers. We're surely not seeing any memos "Reflexive vim usage is now a baseline expectation at [our company]" (context: https://x.com/tobi/status/1909251946235437514)

The as-of-yet unanswered question is: Is this the same? Or will non-LLM-using engineers be left behind?

Perhaps if we get the proper thought influencers on board we can look forward to C-suite VI mandates where performance reviews become descriptions of how we’ve boosted our productivity 10x with effective use of VI keyboard agents, the magic of g-prefixed VI technology, VI-power chording, and V-selection powered column intelligence.

letting people pick their own editors is a zirp phenomenon

How many skilled engineers can you afford to hire? Vs. Far more mediocre engineers who know how to leverage these tools?

definitely - the standford video has a slide about how many cases caused people to be even slower than without AI

Question for discussion - what steps can I take as a human to set myself up for success where success is defined by AI made me faster, more efficient etc?

In many cases (though not all) it's the same thing that makes for great engineering managers:

smart generalists with a lot of depth in maybe a couple of things (so they have an appreciation for depth and complexity) but a lot of breadth so they can effectively manage other specialists,

and having great technical communication skills - be able to communicate what you want done and how without over-specifying every detail, or under-specifying tasks in important ways.

>where success is defined by AI made me faster, more efficient etc?

I think this attitude is part of the problem to me; you're not aiming to be faster or more efficient (and using AI to get there), you're aiming to use AI (to be faster and more efficient).

A sincere approach to improvement wouldn't insist on a tool first.

According to the Stanford video the only cases (statistically speaking) where that happened was high-complexity tasks for legacy / low popularity languages, no? I would imagine that is a small minority of projects. Indeed, the video cites the overall productivity boost at 15 - 20% IIRC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com