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If AI doesn't make you more productive you're using it wrong, end of story. Even if you don't let it author or write a single line of code, from collecting inf

If AI doesn't make you more productive you're using it wrong, end of story. Even if you don't let it author or write a single line of code, from collecting information, inspecting code, reviewing requirements, reviewing PRs, finding bugs, hell even researching information online, there's so many things it does well and fast that if you're not leveraging it, you're either in denial or have ai skill issues period.

mdavidn 11mo ago
It sounds like you're the one in denial? AI makes some things faster, like working in a language I don't know very well. It makes other things slower, like working in a language I already know very well. In both cases, writing code is a small percentage of the total development effort.
- epolanski 11mo ago
  No I'm not, I'm just sick of these edgy takes where AI does not improve productivity when it obviously does. Even if you limit your AI experience to finding information online through deep research it's such a time saver and productivity booster that makes a lot of difference. The list of things it can do for you is massive, even if you don't have it write a single line of code. Yet the counter argument is like "bu..but..my colleague is pushing slop and it's not good at writing code for me", come on, then use it at things it's good at, not things you don't find it satisfactory.
  - lunar_mycroft 11mo ago
    It "obviously" does based on what, exactly? For most devs (and it appears you, based on your comments) the answer is "their own subjective impressions", but that METR study (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09089 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09089) should have completely killed any illusions that that is a reliable metric (note: this argument works regardless of how much LLMs have improved since the study period, because it's about how accurate dev's impressions are, not how good the LLMs actually were).
    - hu3 11mo ago
      not OP but I have a hard metric for you. AI multiplied the amount of code I committed last month by 5x and it's exactly the code I would have written manually. Because I review every line. model: Claude Sonnet 3.5/4.5 in VSCode GitHub Copilot. (GPT Codex and Gemini are good too)
      - lunar_mycroft 11mo ago
        I have no reason to think you're lying about the first part (although I'd point there's several ways that metric could be misleading, and approximately every piece of evidence available suggests it doesn't generalize), but the second part is very fishy. There's really no way for you to know whether or not you'd have written the same code or effectively the same code after reviewing existing code, especially when that review must be fairly cursory (because in order to get the speed up you claim, you must be spending much less time reviewing the code than it would have taken to write). Effectively, what you've done is moved the subjectivity from "how much does this speed me up?" to "is the output the same as if I had done it manually?"
        hu3 11mo ago
        > There's really no way for you to know whether or not you'd have written the same code or effectively the same code after reviewing existing code. There is in my case because it's just CRUD code. The pattern looks exactly like the code I wrote the month prior. And this is where LLMs excel at, in my experience. "Given these examples, extrapolate to these other cases."
    - johnsmith1840 11mo ago
      It's a good study. I also believe it is not an easy skill to learn. I would not say I have 10x output but easily 20% When I was early in use of it I would say I sped up 4x but now after using it heavily for a long time some days it's 20% other days -20% It's a very difficuly technology to know when you're one or the other. The real thing to note is when you "feel" lazy and using AI you are almost certainly in the -20% category. I've had days of not thinking and I have to revert all the code from that day because AI jacked it up so much. To get that speed up you need to be truly focused 100% or risk death by a thousand cuts.
  - douglasisshiny 11mo ago
    >No I'm not, I'm just sick of these edgy takes where AI does not improve productivity when it obviously does. Feel free to cite said data you've seen supporting this argument.
  - Libidinalecon 11mo ago
    I am not even a software engineer but from using the models so much I think you are confined to a specific niche that happens to be well represented in the training data so you have a distorted perspective on the general usefulness of language models. For some things LLMs are like magic. For other things LLMs are maddeningly useless. The irony to me is anyone who says something like "you don't know how to use the LLM" actually hasn't explored the models enough to understand their strengths/weaknesses and how random and arbitrary the strengths and weakness are. Their use cases happen to line up with the strengths of the model and think it is something they are doing special themselves when it is not.
gitremote 11mo ago
My company mandates AI usage and logs AI usage metrics as input to performance evaluation, so I use it every day. It's a Copilot subscription, though.
- cujo 11mo ago
  why though? are they just using it as a proxy for "is 'gitremote' working today?"
  - epolanski 11mo ago
    Someone in management needs a promotion for his impact in revolutionizing and streamlining development from his charlatan managers.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - porksoda 11mo ago
    The first time i asked it about some code in a busy monorepo and it said "oh bob asked me to do this last week when he was doing X, it works like Y and you can integrate it with your stuff like Z, would you like to update the spec now?"... I had some happy feelings. I dont know how they do it without clobbering the context, but it's great.
  - Eldt 11mo ago
    This is probably where they're getting their "90% of code is written with AI!!) metrics from
geraneum 11mo ago
Not to refute your point but I’ve met overly confident people with “AI skills” who are “extremely productive” with it, while producing garbage without knowing, or not being able to tell the difference.
- epolanski 11mo ago
  You're describing lack of care and lack of professionalism, fire these people, nothing to do with the tools, it's the person using it the problem.
  - ModernMech 11mo ago
    We're trying very earnestly to create a world where being careful and professional is a liability. "Move fast and break things, don't ask permission, don't apologize for anything" is the dominant business model. Having care and practicing professionalism takes times and patience, which just translate to missed opportunities to make money. Meanwhile, if you grift hard enough, you can become CEO of a trillion dollar company or President of the United States. Young people are being raised today seeing that you can raise billions on the promise building self driving cars in 3 years, not deliver even after 10 years, and nothing bad actually happens. Your business doesn't crater, you don't get sued into oblivion, your reputation doesn't really change. In fact, the bigger the grift, the more people are incentivized to prop it up. Care and professionalism are dead until we go back to an environment that is not so nurturing for grifts.
    - impulsivepuppet 11mo ago
      While I circumstantially agree, I hold it to be self-evident that the "optimal amount of grift is nonzero". I leave it to politicians to decide whether increased oversight, decentralization, or "solution X" is the right call to make.
      - ModernMech 11mo ago
        A little grift is expected. The real problem for us is when it's grift all the way down, and all the way up, to the extent even the President is grifting. Leaving it to the politicians in that case just means enabling maximum, economy-scale grift.

mdavidn 11mo ago

It sounds like you're the one in denial? AI makes some things faster, like working in a language I don't know very well. It makes other things slower, like working in a language I already know very well. In both cases, writing code is a small percentage of the total development effort.

epolanski 11mo ago
No I'm not, I'm just sick of these edgy takes where AI does not improve productivity when it obviously does. Even if you limit your AI experience to finding information online through deep research it's such a time saver and productivity booster that makes a lot of difference. The list of things it can do for you is massive, even if you don't have it write a single line of code. Yet the counter argument is like "bu..but..my colleague is pushing slop and it's not good at writing code for me", come on, then use it at things it's good at, not things you don't find it satisfactory.
- lunar_mycroft 11mo ago
  It "obviously" does based on what, exactly? For most devs (and it appears you, based on your comments) the answer is "their own subjective impressions", but that METR study (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09089 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.09089) should have completely killed any illusions that that is a reliable metric (note: this argument works regardless of how much LLMs have improved since the study period, because it's about how accurate dev's impressions are, not how good the LLMs actually were).
  - hu3 11mo ago
    not OP but I have a hard metric for you. AI multiplied the amount of code I committed last month by 5x and it's exactly the code I would have written manually. Because I review every line. model: Claude Sonnet 3.5/4.5 in VSCode GitHub Copilot. (GPT Codex and Gemini are good too)
    - lunar_mycroft 11mo ago
      I have no reason to think you're lying about the first part (although I'd point there's several ways that metric could be misleading, and approximately every piece of evidence available suggests it doesn't generalize), but the second part is very fishy. There's really no way for you to know whether or not you'd have written the same code or effectively the same code after reviewing existing code, especially when that review must be fairly cursory (because in order to get the speed up you claim, you must be spending much less time reviewing the code than it would have taken to write). Effectively, what you've done is moved the subjectivity from "how much does this speed me up?" to "is the output the same as if I had done it manually?"
      - hu3 11mo ago
        > There's really no way for you to know whether or not you'd have written the same code or effectively the same code after reviewing existing code. There is in my case because it's just CRUD code. The pattern looks exactly like the code I wrote the month prior. And this is where LLMs excel at, in my experience. "Given these examples, extrapolate to these other cases."
  - johnsmith1840 11mo ago
    It's a good study. I also believe it is not an easy skill to learn. I would not say I have 10x output but easily 20% When I was early in use of it I would say I sped up 4x but now after using it heavily for a long time some days it's 20% other days -20% It's a very difficuly technology to know when you're one or the other. The real thing to note is when you "feel" lazy and using AI you are almost certainly in the -20% category. I've had days of not thinking and I have to revert all the code from that day because AI jacked it up so much. To get that speed up you need to be truly focused 100% or risk death by a thousand cuts.
- douglasisshiny 11mo ago
  >No I'm not, I'm just sick of these edgy takes where AI does not improve productivity when it obviously does. Feel free to cite said data you've seen supporting this argument.
- Libidinalecon 11mo ago
  I am not even a software engineer but from using the models so much I think you are confined to a specific niche that happens to be well represented in the training data so you have a distorted perspective on the general usefulness of language models. For some things LLMs are like magic. For other things LLMs are maddeningly useless. The irony to me is anyone who says something like "you don't know how to use the LLM" actually hasn't explored the models enough to understand their strengths/weaknesses and how random and arbitrary the strengths and weakness are. Their use cases happen to line up with the strengths of the model and think it is something they are doing special themselves when it is not.

gitremote 11mo ago

My company mandates AI usage and logs AI usage metrics as input to performance evaluation, so I use it every day. It's a Copilot subscription, though.

cujo 11mo ago
why though? are they just using it as a proxy for "is 'gitremote' working today?"
- epolanski 11mo ago
  Someone in management needs a promotion for his impact in revolutionizing and streamlining development from his charlatan managers.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- porksoda 11mo ago
  The first time i asked it about some code in a busy monorepo and it said "oh bob asked me to do this last week when he was doing X, it works like Y and you can integrate it with your stuff like Z, would you like to update the spec now?"... I had some happy feelings. I dont know how they do it without clobbering the context, but it's great.
- Eldt 11mo ago
  This is probably where they're getting their "90% of code is written with AI!!) metrics from

geraneum 11mo ago

Not to refute your point but I’ve met overly confident people with “AI skills” who are “extremely productive” with it, while producing garbage without knowing, or not being able to tell the difference.

epolanski 11mo ago
You're describing lack of care and lack of professionalism, fire these people, nothing to do with the tools, it's the person using it the problem.
- ModernMech 11mo ago
  We're trying very earnestly to create a world where being careful and professional is a liability. "Move fast and break things, don't ask permission, don't apologize for anything" is the dominant business model. Having care and practicing professionalism takes times and patience, which just translate to missed opportunities to make money. Meanwhile, if you grift hard enough, you can become CEO of a trillion dollar company or President of the United States. Young people are being raised today seeing that you can raise billions on the promise building self driving cars in 3 years, not deliver even after 10 years, and nothing bad actually happens. Your business doesn't crater, you don't get sued into oblivion, your reputation doesn't really change. In fact, the bigger the grift, the more people are incentivized to prop it up. Care and professionalism are dead until we go back to an environment that is not so nurturing for grifts.
  - impulsivepuppet 11mo ago
    While I circumstantially agree, I hold it to be self-evident that the "optimal amount of grift is nonzero". I leave it to politicians to decide whether increased oversight, decentralization, or "solution X" is the right call to make.
    - ModernMech 11mo ago
      A little grift is expected. The real problem for us is when it's grift all the way down, and all the way up, to the extent even the President is grifting. Leaving it to the politicians in that case just means enabling maximum, economy-scale grift.