> if you’re seeing output that is consistently better than what you produce by hand, you’re probably just below average at programming

even though this statement does not mathematically / statistically make sense - vast majority of SWEs are “below average.” therein lies the crux of this debate. I’ve been coding since the 90’s and:

- LLM output is better than mine from the 90’s

- LLM output is better than mine from early 2000’s

- LLM output is worse than any of mine from 2010 onward

- LLM output (in the right hands) is better than 90% of human-written code I have seen (and I’ve seen a lot)