It’s interesting how self-reports of productivity can be wrong.

For example a study from METR found that developers felt that AI sped them up by 20%, but it empirically it slowed them down by 19%. https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

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rapind 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I suspect there's a lot of nuance you can't really capture in a study like this.

How you use AI will depend on the model, the tools (claude-code vs cursor vs w/e), your familiarity and process (planning phases, vibe coding, etc.), and the team size (solo dev versus large team), your seniority and attention to detail, and hard to measure effects like an increased willingness to tackle harder problems you may have procrastinated on otherwise.

I suspect we're heading to a plateau. I think there's a ton of polish that can be done with existing models to improve the coding experience and interface. I think that we're being massively subsidized by investors racing to own this market, but by the time they can't afford to subsidize it anymore, it'll be such a commodity that the prices won't go up and might even go down regardless of their individual losses.

As someone who knows they are benefitting from AI (study shmuddy), I'm perfectly fine with things slowing down since it's already quite good and stands to be much better with a focus on polish and incremental improvements. I wouldn't invest in these AI companies though!

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didibus 3 days ago | parent [-]

> As someone who knows they are benefitting from AI (study shmuddy)

Look, I get it, I still use it, but you have to admit, people also think that various bogus home remedy totally helps them get over a cold faster. There's absolutely a possibility it in no way makes us faster.

Now, you did say "benefit", that's more broad, and you implied things like polish, I've seen others mention it just makes the work easier, that could be a win in itself (for the workers). Maybe it's about accessibility. Etc.

I do think though, right now, we're all in the "home remedy" territory, until we actually measure these things.

	▲	rapind 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I consider myself to be something of a cynic. That’s not to say I couldn’t be bamboozled in some circumstances.. . but I think it unlikely is this case, because I am simply OK with AI being a complete failure if indeed it is. I don’t have an irrational need for this to work. If anything I was very skeptical to start with and was pleasantly surprised to find it useful. I’m not pushing Amway, I don’t own any crypto, and I’m bearish on the S&P right now due the market cap concentration at the top. And yet I swear that claude code is working for me quite well. > Now, you did say "benefit", that's more broad, and you implied things like polish, I've seen others mention it just makes the work easier, that could be a win in itself (for the workers). Maybe it's about accessibility. Etc. Yes exactly, and this is the (ambiguous) metric that I actually care about. I suspect this study will go down in history as useless and flawed, not to be overly harsh :)

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throitallaway 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sometimes it's like an autocomplete on steroids and reads my mind. Other times it suggests things that make no sense and completely gets in the way.

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biophysboy 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I sort of wonder if AI pushes people to stay "in the weeds". I've noticed that the speed of my software development hinges a lot on decisions that require me to take a step back (e.g. Am I using the right tool? Is this feature necessary? etc)

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sdeframond 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

An interesting study indeed. Not enough data points but still way better than anecdata and self reporting!