Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

The UK government ran a study with thousands of developers quite recently: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-coding-assista...

View on HN

I don't necessarily think the conclusions are wrong, but this relies entirely on self-reported survey results to measure productivity gains. That's too easy to poke holes in, and I think studies like this are unlikely to convince real skeptics in the near term.

At this point it's becoming clear from threads similar to this one that quite a lot of the skeptics are actively working not to be convinced by anything.

Do you have a study to back that up? /s

I agree. I think there are too many resources, examples, and live streams out there for someone to credibly claim at this point that these tools have no value and are all hype. I think the nuance is in how and where you apply it, what your expectations and tolerances are, and what your working style is. They are bad at many things, but there is tremendous value to be discovered. The loudest people on both sides of this debate are typically wrong in similar ways imo.

I am not a software engineer but I am using my own vibe coded video efx software, my own vibe coded audio synth, my own vibe coded art generator for art. These aren't software products though. No one else is ever going to use them. The output is what matters to me. Even I can see that committing LLM generated code at your software job is completely insane. The only way to get a productivity increase is to not bother understanding what the program is doing. If you need to understand what is going on then why not just type it in yourself? My productivity increase is immeasurable because I wouldn't be able to write this video player I made. I have absolutely no idea how it works. It is exactly why I am not a software engineer. Professionals claiming a productivity boost have to be doing something along the lines of not understanding what the program is doing that is proportional to the claimed productivity increase. I don't see how you can have it both ways unless someone is just that slow of a typist.

Woah, finally something with actual metrics instead of vibes!

> Trial participants saved an average of 56 minutes a working day when using AICAs

That feels accurate to me, but again I'm just going on vibes :P

Reply on news.ycombinator.com