> This stuff is relatively new, I don't think anyone has truly figured out how to best approach LLM assisted development yet.

Exactly. But as you say, there are so many people riding the hype wave that it is difficult to come to a sober discussion. LLMs are a new tool that is a quantum leap but they are not a silver bullet for fully autonomous development.

It can be a joy to work with LLMs if you have to write the umpteenth javascript CRUD boilerplate. And it can be deeply frustrating once projects are more complex.

Unfortunately I think benchmaxxing and lm-arena are currently pushing into the wrong direction. But trillions of VC money are at stake and leaning back, digesting, reflecting and discussing things is not an option right now.

> But as you say, there are so many people riding the hype wave that it is difficult to come to a sober discussion. LLMs are a new tool that is a quantum leap but they are not a silver bullet for fully autonomous development.

While I agree with the latter, I actually think on former point - that hype is making sober discussion impossible - is actually directionally incorrect. Like a lot of people I speak to privately, I'm making a lot of money directly from software largely written by LLMs (roadmaps compressed from 1-2 years to months since Claude Code was released), but the company has never mentioned LLMs or AI in any marketing, client communications, or public releases. We all very aware that we need to be able to retire before LLMs swamp or obsolete our niche, and don't want to invite competition.

Outside of tech companies, I think this is extremely common.

> It can be a joy to work with LLMs if you have to write the umpteenth javascript CRUD boilerplate.

There is so much latent demand for slightly customised enterprise CRUD apps. An enormous swathe of corporate jobs are humans performing CRUD and task management. Even if LLMs top out here, the economic disruption from this alone is going to be immense.