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angusturner 4 days ago

I think most SWEs do have a good idea where I work.

They know that its a significant, but not revolutionary improvement.

If you supervise and manage your agents closely on well scoped (small) tasks they are pretty handy.

If you need a prototype and don't care about code quality or maintenance, they are great.

Anyone claiming 2x, 5x, 10x etc is absolutely kidding themselves for any non-trivial software.

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jmcodes 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

I've found a pretty good speed up just letting Claude Code run with a custom prompt to gather the context (relevant files, types, etc..) for the task then having it put together a document with that context.

It takes all of five minutes to have it run and at the end I can review it, if it's small ask it to execute, and if it actually requires me to work it myself well now I have a reference with line numbers, some comments on how the system appears to work, what the intent is, areas of interest, etc..

I also rely heavily on the sequential thinking MCP server to give it more structure.

Edit:

I will say because I think it's important I've been a senior dev for a while now, a lot of my job _is_ reviewing other people's pull requests. I don't find it hard or tedious at all.

Honestly it's a lot easier to review a few small "PRs" as the agent works than some of the giant PRs I'd get from team members before.

	▲	zmmmmm 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> I've been a senior dev for a while now, a lot of my job _is_ reviewing other people's pull requests I kind of hate that I'm saying this, but I'm sort of similar and one thing I really like is having zero guilt about trashing the LLM's code. So often people are submitting something and the code is OK but just pervasively not quite how I like it. Some staff will engage in micro arguments about things rather than just doing them how I want and it's just tiring. Then LLMs are really good at explaining why they did stuff (or simulating that) as well. LLMs will enthusiastically redo something and then help adjust their own AGENTS.md file to align better in the future.

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bluefirebrand 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If you supervise and manage your agents closely on well scoped (small) tasks they are pretty handy

Compared to just doing it yourself though?

Imagine having to micromanage a junior developer like this to get good results

Ridiculous tbh

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dingnuts 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

if the benefit is less than 2x then we're talking about AI assisted coding as being a very, very expensive IntelliSense. 1.x improvement just isn't much. My mind goes back to that study showing engineers claimed a 20% improvement and measured 20% reduction in productivity -- this is all encouraging me to just keep using traditional tools.

	▲	rmunn 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		The only AI-assisted software work I've seen actually have a benefit is the way my coworker use Supermaven, where it's basically Intellisense but suggesting filling in the function parameters for you as well. He'll type `MergeEx` and it will not just suggest `MergeExample(` as Intellisense would have done, but also suggest `MergeExample(oldExample, newExample, mergeOptions)` based on the variable names in scope at the moment and which ones line up with the types. Then he presses Tab and moves on, saving 10-15 seconds of typing. Repeat that multiple times through the day and it might be a 10% improvement, with no time lost on fiddling with prompts to get the AI to correct its mistakes. (Here, if the suggestion is wrong, he just ignores it and keeps typing, and the second he types a character that wasn't the next one in the suggestion it goes away and a new suggestion might be calculated, but the cognitive load in ignoring the incorrect suggestion is minimal).

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gnarcoregrizz 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've found it to be insanely productive when doing framework-based web development (currently working with Django), I would say it's an easy 5-10x improvement in productivity there, but I still need to keep a somewhat close eye on it. It's not nearly as productive in my home grown stuff, it can be kind of annoying actually.

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liszper 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd argue this just proves my point.