Anthropic did a study where people who worked like this understood their systems a lot better than and were basically as fast as AI maximalists.
Plus it’s so much cheaper… that has to matter.
Plus it’s so much cheaper… that has to matter.
Where I'd push back drawing too many conclusions from this study: arguably most successful AI usage is senior developers that know the programming environment they're working in. Know how far to trust the AI. And carefully review / understand outputs.
Nevertheless, the study's still interesting, and I wish they'd replicate with a much higher n per group. Junior developers (undergrads?) are a more abundant group and not particularly specialized yet. They've also spent years hand-coding at University, but probably could adapt to AI tooling pretty easily.
The study: https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skil...