You're going to keep seeing this because people don't like AI adoption.

But the fact is this is not how it is. Every competent developer I know is delivering significantly more after being AI enabled.

Anyone seriously using the tools without a chip on their shoulder is going to say the same.

Are the tools delivering perfect code 100% of the time, no, of course not. But that's the new skill. Guiding them so they deliver good enough code at 5-50x the velocity. As the models improve and the ecosystem tries out new workflows, the skill changes and the output gets better and better.

What we're capable of delivering now is incredible and would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

Of course your claim of 5-50x velocity is not born out in any metrics which track industry software velocity and you need to bend yourself backwards to come up with reasons to explain why they aren't.

I’d we are talking about adding code to a large existing production code base then there’s no way I can see to get 5x, let alone 50x. My experience and the data I’ve seen is more like a 10-20% improvement. We see the volume of code increase more than that but a lot of is bug fixes only necessary because the initial commit wasn’t adequately tested and reviewed. So the net effect is less.

Now if you mean generating some one off script or playing around with a prototype in some area you don’t know then I can see more like 5-10x but these are typically not the bottleneck for shipping software.

They're expensive to perform and rarely are reproducible but I'll wait for the empirical studies before believing any claims.

We can't even decide if type systems have made us more productive. It's barely been studied. Same with test-driven development.

What it sounds like we'll see, from your description of AI-enabled developers, is a commensurate (perhaps linear) increase in the rate of errors reaching production systems. Every line of code is a liability. Now everyone has a fire-hose they can aim at a production environment.

At least time and effort prevented some bad ideas and potentially bad code from reaching production.

I'm sure the platforms providing these tools are going to be happy with the results when every business writing code this way becomes dependent on them and have no exit strategy. The prices increase, the service gets worse, and you're locked in. Sounds real productive.

I'm always wondering who has the time to consume all the new code that is being produced. Like sure, you can produce at 5-10X the speed, but is someone using those features? Not sure if the typical consumer mind can keep up with such speed of changes.

> Guiding them so they deliver good enough code at 5-50x the velocity.

Huge problem with this is the rate at which anyone can take accountability for the code produced.

Of course you can let AI do reviews, but my experience so far is that it's, broadly speaking, not working.

> 50x the velocity

:blinks: You are producing in a week what used to take you a year?

This is a business mindset, though. AI is great if you care about "delivering" stuff and "velocity" and you don't care what that stuff looks like. I got into computer programming because I like to program computers, not whatever this is. So glad I changed roles away from software development and only do programming at home as a hobby.

Can someone translate this?

> What we're capable of delivering now is incredible and would have been unimaginable just a few years ago

What I mean is - are there concrete examples, real world "things" that came from AI programming, that are incredible, and someone can talk about and point to how AI led to the thing being possible?

After going back and forth, I stopped using AI for coding at all.

Maybe I am not "competent" developer, but the point has some merit.

I feel the same way.

Even if I'm reviewing more, I built the feature without even opening my editor.

My workflow is:

1. Plan mode 2. Read thoroughly or skim if its an easy task 3. /draft command that puts a draft PR on github 4. Review closely then send to team

I'm someone with 20 years in software and the last 10 in management. I have good instincts, good design pattern knowledge, and understand system design well. But my actual coding skills are rusty, I can do it but it takes a lot of time to RTFM because specific libraries and syntax aren't on the top of my mind.

With AI I can build. I'm having so much fun turning ideas into code. I can do a week's worth of work before lunch. I can ask AI to add comments so detailed that my code becomes a refresher tutorial.

It's so exciting to be able to bring my ideas to life, make use of my experience, and not be hobbled by my somewhat atrophied hands-on coding skills. I for one welcome this revolution.

I love AI, but it's possible that we are in an temporary golden age of software development because of 3 things:

1. The software is simple because lowly humans wrote them and debugged them and maintained them.

2. The humans are competent in software engineering.

3. All of a sudden we now have help from AI.

Point 3. is here to stay, but 1. and 2. could disappear.

5-50x huh? Years of AI hype and yet still to this day, not a single person or organization can provide any kind of reputable evidence that it has significantly increased their productivity.