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I agree with both you and the GP. Yes, coding is being totally revolutionized by AI, and we don't really know where the ceiling will be (though I'm skeptical w

I agree with both you and the GP. Yes, coding is being totally revolutionized by AI, and we don't really know where the ceiling will be (though I'm skeptical we'll reach true AGI any time soon), but I believe there still an essential element of understanding how computer systems work that is required to leverage AI in a sustainable way. There is some combination of curiosity of inner workings and precision of thought that has always been essential in becoming a successful engineer. In my very first CS 101 class I remember the professor alluding to two hurdles (pointers and recursion) which a significant portion of the class would not be able to surpass and they would change majors. Throughout the subsequent decades I saw this pattern again and again with junior engineers, bootcamp grads, etc. There are some people no matter how hard they work, they can't grok abstraction and unlock a general understanding of computing possibility. With AI you don't need to know syntax anymore, but to write the write prompts to maintain a system and (crucially) the integrity of its data over time, you still need this understanding. I'm not sure how the AI-native generation of software engineers will develop this without writing code hands-on, but I am confident they will figure it out because I believe it to be an innate, often pedantic, thirst for understanding that some people have and some don't. This is the essential quality to succeed in software both in the past and in the future. Although vibe coding lowers the barrier to entry dramatically, there is a brick wall looming just beyond the toy app/prototype phase for anyone without a technical mindset.

athrowaway3z 8mo ago
I can see why people are skeptical devs can be 10x as productive. But something I'd bet money on is that devs are 10x more productive at using these tools.
- J_Shelby_J 8mo ago
  Id wager my life savings that devs aren’t even 1.5x more productive using these tools.
  - zer00eyz 8mo ago
    Dead wrong. Because the world is still filled with problems that would once have been on the wrong side of the is it worth your time matrix ( https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/ ) There are all sorts of things that I, personally, should have automated long ago that I threw at claud to do for me. What was the cost to me? Prompt and a code review. Meanwhile, on larger tasks an LLM deeply integrated into my IDE has been a boon. Having an internal debate on how to solve a problem, try both, write a test, prove out what is going to be better. Pair program, function by function with your LLM, treat it like a jr dev who can type faster than you if you give it clear instructions. I think you will be shocked at how quickly you can massively scale up your productivity.
    - newAccount2025 8mo ago
      The matrix framing is a very nice and way to put it. This morning I asked my assistant to code up a nice debugger for a particular flow in my application. It’s much better than I would have had time/patience to build myself for a nice-to-have.
    - rubyn00bie 8mo ago
      I sort of have a different view of that time matrix. If AI is only able to help me do tasks that are of low value, where I previously wouldn’t have bothered—- is it really saving me anything? Before where I’d simply ignore auxiliary tasks, and focus on what matters, I’m now constantly detoured with them thinking “it’ll only take ten minutes.” I also primarily write Elixir, and I have found most Agents are only capable of writing small pieces well. More complicated asks tend to produce unnecessarily complicated solutions, ones that may “work,” on the surface, but don’t hold up in practice. I’ve seen a large increase in small bugs with more AI coding assistance. When I write code, I want to write it and forget about it. As a result, I’ve written a LOT of code which has gone on to work for years without touching it. The amount of time I spent writing it is inconsequential in every sense. I personally have not found AI capable of producing code like that (yet, as all things, that could change). Does AI help with some stuff? Sure. I always forget common patterns in Terraform because I don’t often have to use it. Writing some initial resources and asking it to “make it normal,” is helpful. That does save time. Asking it to write a gen server correctly, is an act of self-harm because it fundamentally does not understand concurrency in Erlang/BEAM/OTP. It very much looks like it does, but it 100% does not. tldr; I think the ease of use of AI can cause us to over produce and as a result we miss the forest for the trees.
- seff 8mo ago
  I view the current tools as more of a multiplier of base skill. A 1x engineer may become a 5x engineer, but a -1x will also produce 5x more bad code.
  - Retric 8mo ago
    Several experiments have shown quality of output at every skill level drops. In many cases the quantity of output is good enough to compensate, but quality is extremely difficult to improve at scale. Beefing up QA to handle significantly more code of noticeably lower quality only goes so far.
- rirze 8mo ago
  Like others are saying, AI will accelerate the gap between competent devs and mediocre devs. It is a multiplier. AI cannot replace fundamentals, at least not a good helmsman with a good rational, detail-oriented mind. Having fundamentals (skill & knowledge) + using AI will be the cheat code in the next 10 years. The only historical analogue of this is perhaps differentiating a good project manager from an excellent one. No matter how advanced, technology will not substitute for competence.
- bodge5000 8mo ago
  I get its necessary for investment, but I'd be a lot happier with these tools if we didn't keep making these wild claims, because I'm certainly not seeing 10x the output. When I ask for examples, 90% its claude code (not a beacon of good software anyway but if nearly everyone is pointing to one example it tells you thats the best you can probably expect) and 10% weekend projects, which are cool, but not 10x cool. Opus 4.5 was released in Dec 2025, by this point people should be churning out year long projects in a month, and I certainly haven't seen that. I've used them a few times, and they're pretty cool. If it was just sold as that (again, couldn't be, see: trillion dollar investments) I wouldn't have nearly as much of a leg to stand on
  - scotty79 8mo ago
    Have you seen moltbook? One dude coded reddit clone for bots in less the a week. How is it not at least 10x of what was achievable in pre-ai world? Granted he left the db open to public, but some meat powered startups did exactly the same few years ago.
    - Krei-se 8mo ago
      Because its a clone.
    - bodge5000 8mo ago
      I mean as has already been pointed out the fact that its a clone is a big reason why, but then I also think I could probably churn out a simple clone of reddit in less than a week. We've been through this before with twitter, the value isnt the tech (which is relatively straightforward), its the userbase. Of course Reddit has some more advanced features which would be more difficult, but I think the public db probably tells you that wasn't much of a concern to Moltbook either, so yeh, I reckon I could do that.
      - scotty79 8mo ago
        Double your estimate and switch the unit or time to next larger one. That's how programmers time estimate tend to be. So two months and I'm right there with you.
- gtowey 8mo ago
  At the company I work for, despite pushing widespread adoption, I have seen exactly a zero percent increase in the rate at which major projects get shipped.
  - qualifck 8mo ago
    This is what keeps getting me. People here keep posting benchmarks, bragging about 5x, 10x, 20x. None of the companies we work with are putting anything faster. The evangelist response is to call it a skill issue, but looking around it seems like no one anywhere is actually pushing out new products meaningfully faster.
    - gtowey 8mo ago
      I think it shows the barrier to building software quickly was never about how fast you can write the code. Maybe at a startup it is, but for any established company I find most of the friction is systemic management issues.
      - Micheasherman 8mo ago
        Well, considering there are coders who type under 30 WPM and are senior level programmers I would have thought people realized that years ago. Oh well
- rsynnott 8mo ago
  > But something I'd bet money on is that devs are 10x more productive at using these tools. If this were true, we should be seeing evidence of it by now, either in vastly increased output by companies (and open source projects, and indie game devs, etc), or in really _dramatic_ job losses. This is assuming a sensible definition of 'productive'; if you mean 'lines of code' or 'self-assessment', then, eh, maybe, but those aren't useful metrics of productivity.
rendaw 8mo ago
What an awful professor! When I first tried to learn pointers, I didn't get it. I tried again 6 months later and suddenly it clicked. The same thing happened for another guy I was learning with. So the professor just gaslit years of students into thinking they were too dumb to get programming, and also left them with the developmental disability of "if you can't figure something out in a few days, you'll never get it".
- discreteevent 8mo ago
  Indeed. Never let any idiot like this put you off. Back yourself and persist, persist, persist.
plomme 8mo ago
I don’t think there will be an “AI native” generation of developers. AI will be the entity that “groks pointers” and no one else will know it or care what goes on under the hood.
stuartaxelowen 8mo ago
It is tempting to think that we can delegate describing the mental model to AI, but it seems like all of this boils down to humans making bets, and it also seems like the fundamental bets engineers are making are about the formalisms that encode the product and make it valuable.

athrowaway3z 8mo ago

I can see why people are skeptical devs can be 10x as productive. But something I'd bet money on is that devs are 10x more productive at using these tools.

J_Shelby_J 8mo ago
Id wager my life savings that devs aren’t even 1.5x more productive using these tools.
- zer00eyz 8mo ago
  Dead wrong. Because the world is still filled with problems that would once have been on the wrong side of the is it worth your time matrix ( https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/ ) There are all sorts of things that I, personally, should have automated long ago that I threw at claud to do for me. What was the cost to me? Prompt and a code review. Meanwhile, on larger tasks an LLM deeply integrated into my IDE has been a boon. Having an internal debate on how to solve a problem, try both, write a test, prove out what is going to be better. Pair program, function by function with your LLM, treat it like a jr dev who can type faster than you if you give it clear instructions. I think you will be shocked at how quickly you can massively scale up your productivity.
  - newAccount2025 8mo ago
    The matrix framing is a very nice and way to put it. This morning I asked my assistant to code up a nice debugger for a particular flow in my application. It’s much better than I would have had time/patience to build myself for a nice-to-have.
  - rubyn00bie 8mo ago
    I sort of have a different view of that time matrix. If AI is only able to help me do tasks that are of low value, where I previously wouldn’t have bothered—- is it really saving me anything? Before where I’d simply ignore auxiliary tasks, and focus on what matters, I’m now constantly detoured with them thinking “it’ll only take ten minutes.” I also primarily write Elixir, and I have found most Agents are only capable of writing small pieces well. More complicated asks tend to produce unnecessarily complicated solutions, ones that may “work,” on the surface, but don’t hold up in practice. I’ve seen a large increase in small bugs with more AI coding assistance. When I write code, I want to write it and forget about it. As a result, I’ve written a LOT of code which has gone on to work for years without touching it. The amount of time I spent writing it is inconsequential in every sense. I personally have not found AI capable of producing code like that (yet, as all things, that could change). Does AI help with some stuff? Sure. I always forget common patterns in Terraform because I don’t often have to use it. Writing some initial resources and asking it to “make it normal,” is helpful. That does save time. Asking it to write a gen server correctly, is an act of self-harm because it fundamentally does not understand concurrency in Erlang/BEAM/OTP. It very much looks like it does, but it 100% does not. tldr; I think the ease of use of AI can cause us to over produce and as a result we miss the forest for the trees.
seff 8mo ago
I view the current tools as more of a multiplier of base skill. A 1x engineer may become a 5x engineer, but a -1x will also produce 5x more bad code.
- Retric 8mo ago
  Several experiments have shown quality of output at every skill level drops. In many cases the quantity of output is good enough to compensate, but quality is extremely difficult to improve at scale. Beefing up QA to handle significantly more code of noticeably lower quality only goes so far.
rirze 8mo ago
Like others are saying, AI will accelerate the gap between competent devs and mediocre devs. It is a multiplier. AI cannot replace fundamentals, at least not a good helmsman with a good rational, detail-oriented mind. Having fundamentals (skill & knowledge) + using AI will be the cheat code in the next 10 years. The only historical analogue of this is perhaps differentiating a good project manager from an excellent one. No matter how advanced, technology will not substitute for competence.
bodge5000 8mo ago
I get its necessary for investment, but I'd be a lot happier with these tools if we didn't keep making these wild claims, because I'm certainly not seeing 10x the output. When I ask for examples, 90% its claude code (not a beacon of good software anyway but if nearly everyone is pointing to one example it tells you thats the best you can probably expect) and 10% weekend projects, which are cool, but not 10x cool. Opus 4.5 was released in Dec 2025, by this point people should be churning out year long projects in a month, and I certainly haven't seen that. I've used them a few times, and they're pretty cool. If it was just sold as that (again, couldn't be, see: trillion dollar investments) I wouldn't have nearly as much of a leg to stand on
- scotty79 8mo ago
  Have you seen moltbook? One dude coded reddit clone for bots in less the a week. How is it not at least 10x of what was achievable in pre-ai world? Granted he left the db open to public, but some meat powered startups did exactly the same few years ago.
  - Krei-se 8mo ago
    Because its a clone.
  - bodge5000 8mo ago
    I mean as has already been pointed out the fact that its a clone is a big reason why, but then I also think I could probably churn out a simple clone of reddit in less than a week. We've been through this before with twitter, the value isnt the tech (which is relatively straightforward), its the userbase. Of course Reddit has some more advanced features which would be more difficult, but I think the public db probably tells you that wasn't much of a concern to Moltbook either, so yeh, I reckon I could do that.
    - scotty79 8mo ago
      Double your estimate and switch the unit or time to next larger one. That's how programmers time estimate tend to be. So two months and I'm right there with you.
gtowey 8mo ago
At the company I work for, despite pushing widespread adoption, I have seen exactly a zero percent increase in the rate at which major projects get shipped.
- qualifck 8mo ago
  This is what keeps getting me. People here keep posting benchmarks, bragging about 5x, 10x, 20x. None of the companies we work with are putting anything faster. The evangelist response is to call it a skill issue, but looking around it seems like no one anywhere is actually pushing out new products meaningfully faster.
  - gtowey 8mo ago
    I think it shows the barrier to building software quickly was never about how fast you can write the code. Maybe at a startup it is, but for any established company I find most of the friction is systemic management issues.
    - Micheasherman 8mo ago
      Well, considering there are coders who type under 30 WPM and are senior level programmers I would have thought people realized that years ago. Oh well
rsynnott 8mo ago
> But something I'd bet money on is that devs are 10x more productive at using these tools. If this were true, we should be seeing evidence of it by now, either in vastly increased output by companies (and open source projects, and indie game devs, etc), or in really _dramatic_ job losses. This is assuming a sensible definition of 'productive'; if you mean 'lines of code' or 'self-assessment', then, eh, maybe, but those aren't useful metrics of productivity.

rendaw 8mo ago

What an awful professor! When I first tried to learn pointers, I didn't get it. I tried again 6 months later and suddenly it clicked. The same thing happened for another guy I was learning with. So the professor just gaslit years of students into thinking they were too dumb to get programming, and also left them with the developmental disability of "if you can't figure something out in a few days, you'll never get it".

discreteevent 8mo ago
Indeed. Never let any idiot like this put you off. Back yourself and persist, persist, persist.

plomme 8mo ago

I don’t think there will be an “AI native” generation of developers. AI will be the entity that “groks pointers” and no one else will know it or care what goes on under the hood.

stuartaxelowen 8mo ago

It is tempting to think that we can delegate describing the mental model to AI, but it seems like all of this boils down to humans making bets, and it also seems like the fundamental bets engineers are making are about the formalisms that encode the product and make it valuable.