> Many (but certainly not all) software companies have increased their output without hiring more people

What do you mean by output? LoC?

In my bubble, I’m seeing people write entire software stacks from scratch, single-handedly. At this point it’s clear to me that software engineering has taken off by a factor of 10x-100x, at least in some industry areas and in some circles.

But that’s not the point here - even if this is true and it continues, IT is not the entire world economy. I don’t think we’ll see the same productivity gains propagate more widely soon. This will take years. The real world is a ship that’s immensely hard and slow to steer, which is easy to forget when your CI pipeline deploys commits to production in minutes.

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byko3y an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I can "write" a whole OS kernel by running `git clone https://kernel.org` — that does not make me much of the programmer. Copying software was never a problem — making the software perform the job you want was the problem.

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jeremyjh 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Where is this new, valuable software having an impact? Yes, there is quite a lot more code being written. But where is it being run?

	▲	tdeck 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is small-scale but I know a lot of Blind people who are vibe-coding accessible tools to solve their problems. Most of them have never done any programming at all. For example, my friend Marco has built like 10 different apps. I've used some of them and they're useful. I think this is an example of something that just wouldn't be happening on this scale without LLMs. https://marconius.com/

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geraneum 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What about productivity gains (recent/profit, company bottom line)? I think that’s what the op’s measuring. Have you seen a 10x-100x on that front? If not, what’s the disconnect here?

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throwuxiytayq 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Productivity != sales, especially in software, I think. This has been happening for just a few months, less than one project cycle. I think we’re about to see a huge wave of software products. But it’s possible most of these are competing for a slice of a constant-sized pie, though.

	▲	geraneum 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		When your manager/boss asks how this huge productivity gain gonna lead to better product -> sale, and why are they spending a good amount of money on AI tools, do you say “Productivity != sales, especially in software”?