19 ms·

Spot on take. The people I’ve noticed that say things like “it’s not useful” are the ones who are doing so little they can’t see the value. This isn’t to say t

by bengale 6mo ago

Spot on take. The people I’ve noticed that say things like “it’s not useful” are the ones who are doing so little they can’t see the value. This isn’t to say there’s not hype. Just that if you’re not seeing big productivity gains you need to make sure you really are an outlier and not just surplus to requirements.

imiric 6mo ago
I rarely come across people who flat out say "it's not useful". They exist, but IME they're the minority. Rather, I hear a lot of nuanced opinions of how the tech is useful in some scenarios, but that the net benefit is not clear. I.e. the tech has many drawbacks that make it require a lot of effort to extract actual value from. This is an opinion I personally share. In most cases, those "big productivity gains" are vastly blown out of proportion. In the context of software development specifically, sure, you can now generate thousands of lines of code in an instant, but writing code was never the bottleneck. It was always the effort to carefully design and implement correct solutions to real-world problems. These new tools can approximate this to an extent, when given relevant context and expert guidance, but the output is always unreliable, and very difficult to verify. So anyone who claims "big productivity gains" is likely not bothering to verify the output, which in most cases will eventually come back to haunt them and/or anyone who depends on their work. And this should concern everyone.
- SpaceNoodled 6mo ago
  That's only because we're trying to not be too condescending.
- hparadiz 6mo ago
  "productivity" is a misnomer. Sort of. The things I'm building are all things I've had on the back burner for years. Most of which I never would have bothered to do. But AI lets me ignore that excuse and just do it.
  - ok_dad 6mo ago
    The productivity comes from not having the startup costs. You don’t need to research the best way to do X, just verify that X works via tests and documentation. I find it still takes T hours to actually implement X with an agent, but if I didn’t know how to do X it eliminates that startup cost which might make it take 3T hours instead. The only downside is not learning about method Y or Z that work differently than X but would also be sufficient, and you don’t learn the nuances and details of the problem space for X, Y, and Z.
    - abustamam 6mo ago
      I find it useful to use a brainstorming skill to teach me X Y Z and help me understand the tradeoffs for each, and what it'd recommend. I've learned about outbox pattern, eventual consistency, CAP theorem, etc. It's been fun. But if I didn't ask the LLM to help me understand it would have just went with option A without me understanding why.
      - ok_dad 6mo ago
        In my instance, I’m talking more about using library X or library Y, not the difference between using an atomic versus a mutex. I want to learn the latter, but the former isn’t something I care about.
        abustamam 6mo ago
        Ah, that's fair. I personally don't normally care about library usage as long as it's fairly well documented and effective (like Shadcn vs raw tailwind components vs chakra... I don't really care).
        ok_dad 6mo ago
        Yea I just use LLM agents as tools, I don’t kick whole features to them or have a cloud agent running all the time. I rarely use more than $100 in usage monthly, usually less than half that. I use tab completion a lot in Cursor and use agents to make mechanical changes or integrate features I don’t care about learning, like integrating several libraries together into my application. I also use it to write things I’ve already got examples for, like database APIs. Software engineers who haven’t tried these tools don’t understand what they are, and vibe coders who never understood software are taking the mindshare in public because it sounds revolutionary to some and apocalyptic to others. You have to stop listening to the claw bros and try using these as tools yourself in small ways to see what it’s really about, IMO.
- AbanoubRodolf 6mo ago
  [flagged]
- abustamam 6mo ago
  Really? On HN I see so many people AI naysayers who say either it's not useful or it's a net negative on productivity. Perhaps they are a minority, but they're certainly a vocal one.
- kaiokendev 6mo ago
  > writing code was never the bottleneck This is overly dismissive, there are many things that are possible now that weren't before because writing the code is no longer the bottleneck, like porting parts of the codebase from managed to unmanaged for teams with limited capacity. Writing code is about 1/3rd of the job. Another 1/3rd is analysis, which also benefits from AI allowing people who aren't very good at it to outperform. The final 1/3rd is- > the effort to carefully design and implement correct solutions to real-world problems. That's problem-solving - that part doesn't get sped up, and likely never will, reliably.
dvfjsdhgfv 6mo ago
I'm doing a lot, I see a lot of improvement, I see a lot of uses, but still consider the current generation of agentic coding simply not working for something more than a toy project - no matter how much skills, harnesses and what not you include. Happy to be proven otherwise, but Anhtropic's CCC is a good case in point.

by bengale 6mo ago

imiric 6mo ago

I rarely come across people who flat out say "it's not useful". They exist, but IME they're the minority. Rather, I hear a lot of nuanced opinions of how the tech is useful in some scenarios, but that the net benefit is not clear. I.e. the tech has many drawbacks that make it require a lot of effort to extract actual value from. This is an opinion I personally share. In most cases, those "big productivity gains" are vastly blown out of proportion. In the context of software development specifically, sure, you can now generate thousands of lines of code in an instant, but writing code was never the bottleneck. It was always the effort to carefully design and implement correct solutions to real-world problems. These new tools can approximate this to an extent, when given relevant context and expert guidance, but the output is always unreliable, and very difficult to verify. So anyone who claims "big productivity gains" is likely not bothering to verify the output, which in most cases will eventually come back to haunt them and/or anyone who depends on their work. And this should concern everyone.

SpaceNoodled 6mo ago
That's only because we're trying to not be too condescending.
hparadiz 6mo ago
"productivity" is a misnomer. Sort of. The things I'm building are all things I've had on the back burner for years. Most of which I never would have bothered to do. But AI lets me ignore that excuse and just do it.
- ok_dad 6mo ago
  The productivity comes from not having the startup costs. You don’t need to research the best way to do X, just verify that X works via tests and documentation. I find it still takes T hours to actually implement X with an agent, but if I didn’t know how to do X it eliminates that startup cost which might make it take 3T hours instead. The only downside is not learning about method Y or Z that work differently than X but would also be sufficient, and you don’t learn the nuances and details of the problem space for X, Y, and Z.
  - abustamam 6mo ago
    I find it useful to use a brainstorming skill to teach me X Y Z and help me understand the tradeoffs for each, and what it'd recommend. I've learned about outbox pattern, eventual consistency, CAP theorem, etc. It's been fun. But if I didn't ask the LLM to help me understand it would have just went with option A without me understanding why.
    - ok_dad 6mo ago
      In my instance, I’m talking more about using library X or library Y, not the difference between using an atomic versus a mutex. I want to learn the latter, but the former isn’t something I care about.
      - abustamam 6mo ago
        Ah, that's fair. I personally don't normally care about library usage as long as it's fairly well documented and effective (like Shadcn vs raw tailwind components vs chakra... I don't really care).
        ok_dad 6mo ago
        Yea I just use LLM agents as tools, I don’t kick whole features to them or have a cloud agent running all the time. I rarely use more than $100 in usage monthly, usually less than half that. I use tab completion a lot in Cursor and use agents to make mechanical changes or integrate features I don’t care about learning, like integrating several libraries together into my application. I also use it to write things I’ve already got examples for, like database APIs. Software engineers who haven’t tried these tools don’t understand what they are, and vibe coders who never understood software are taking the mindshare in public because it sounds revolutionary to some and apocalyptic to others. You have to stop listening to the claw bros and try using these as tools yourself in small ways to see what it’s really about, IMO.
AbanoubRodolf 6mo ago
[flagged]
abustamam 6mo ago
Really? On HN I see so many people AI naysayers who say either it's not useful or it's a net negative on productivity. Perhaps they are a minority, but they're certainly a vocal one.
kaiokendev 6mo ago
> writing code was never the bottleneck This is overly dismissive, there are many things that are possible now that weren't before because writing the code is no longer the bottleneck, like porting parts of the codebase from managed to unmanaged for teams with limited capacity. Writing code is about 1/3rd of the job. Another 1/3rd is analysis, which also benefits from AI allowing people who aren't very good at it to outperform. The final 1/3rd is- > the effort to carefully design and implement correct solutions to real-world problems. That's problem-solving - that part doesn't get sped up, and likely never will, reliably.

dvfjsdhgfv 6mo ago

I'm doing a lot, I see a lot of improvement, I see a lot of uses, but still consider the current generation of agentic coding simply not working for something more than a toy project - no matter how much skills, harnesses and what not you include. Happy to be proven otherwise, but Anhtropic's CCC is a good case in point.