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If you can solve "measure programming productivity with data" you'll have cracked one of the hardest problems in our industry. > Why do we need all this tech?
by simonw 10mo ago
If you can solve "measure programming productivity with data" you'll have cracked one of the hardest problems in our industry.
> Why do we need all this tech?
Slightly odd question to be asking here on Hacker News!
- oulipo2 10mo agoSure, but I wasn't the one pretending to have "facts" on AI... > Slightly odd question to be asking here on Hacker News! It's absolutely not? The first line of question when you work in a domain SHOULD BE "why am I doing this" and "what is the impact of my work on others"
- simonw 10mo agoYeah, I think I quoted you out of context there. I'm very much in agreement about asking "what is the impact of my work on others".
- lunar_mycroft 10mo ago> If you can solve "measure programming productivity with data" you'll have cracked one of the hardest problems in our industry. That doesn't mean that we have to accept claims that LLMs drastically increase productivity without good evidence (or in the presence of evidence to the contrary). If anything, it means the opposite.
- simonw 10mo agoAt the is point the best evidence we have is a large volume of extremely experienced programmers - like antirez - saying "this stuff is amazing for coding productivity". My own personal experience supports that too. If you're determined to say "I refuse to accept appeal to authority here, I demand a solution to the measuring productivity problem first" then you're probably in for a long wait.
- llmslave3 10mo agoThere is also plenty of extremely experienced programmers saying "this stuff is useless for programming".
- simonw 10mo agoIf a bunch of people say "it's impossible to go to the moon, nobody has done it" and Buzz Aldrin says "I have been to the moon, here are the photos/video/NASA archives to prove it", who do you believe?
- sussyomegalul 10mo ago[dead]
- fatata123 10mo ago[dead]
- oulipo2 10mo agoThe equivalent of "we've been to the moon" in the case of LLMs would be: "Hey Claude, generate a full Linux kernel from scratch for me, go on the web to find protocol definitions, it should handle Wifi, USB, Bluetooth, and have WebGL-backed window server" And then have it run in a couple of hours/days to deliver, without touching it. We are *far* from this
- simonw 10mo agoOK then, new analogy. If a bunch of people say "there are no cafes in this town that serve bench on a Sunday" and then Buzz Aldrin says "I just had a great brunch in the cafe over there, here's a photo", who would you listen to?
- oulipo2 10mo agoWell sure, but... that's anecdotical evidence. It's not a formal proof, with studies, etc Also in the age of AI this argument would be flawed precisely because that "photo" from Buzz Aldrin could be AI-generated, but that's beside the point