So your take is that every real software developer I know is simply bad at using this magical tool that performs on the level of mid-senior level software engineer in the hands of a few chosen ones? But the chosen ones never build anything in public where it can be observed, evaluated, and critiqued. How unfortunate is that?

The people I talked to use a wide variety of environments and their experience is similar across the board, whether they're working in Nodejs, React, Vue, Ruby, PHP, Java, Elixir, or Python.

> Productivity, especially when dealing with code, is hard to quanitfy.

Indeed, that's why I think most people claiming these obscene benefits are really bad at evaluating their own performance and/or started from a really low baseline.

I always think back to a study I read a while ago where people without ADHD were given stimulant medication and reported massive improvements in productivity but objective measurements showed that their real-world performance was equal to, or slightly lower than their baseline.

I think it's very relevant to the psychology behind this AI worship. Some people are being elevated from a low baseline whilst others are imagining the benefits.