5 ms·

In my opinion you are just wrong. It’s an absolute game changer, and it can now multiply your productivity fivefold if it’s a solo greenfield project. Maybe h

In my opinion you are just wrong. It’s an absolute game changer, and it can now multiply your productivity fivefold if it’s a solo greenfield project. Maybe half a year ago it was as you said. You had to wait for the agent to finish, you had to review carefully, and often the result was not that great. You did not save a lot of time. Now I can spin up 3+ parallel conversations in Codex, each in a git worktree. My work is mainly QA testing the features, refining the behavior, and sometimes making architectural decisions. The results are now undeniable. In the past I could not have developed a product of that scope in my free time. That is what is possible today. I suspect many engineers have not yet tried things that became feasible over the last months. Like parallel agents, resolving merge conflicts, separating out functionality from a large branch into proper PRs.

atomicnumber3 5mo ago
"many engineers have not yet tried things that became feasible over the last months" I have heard this statement every single day for 2 years and yet we still have no companies compressing 10 years into 1 year thus exploding past all the incumbents who don't "get it".
- passivepinetree 5mo ago
  Well, the GP mentioned > if it’s a solo greenfield project which is a pretty large caveat. Anecdotally, I've found my side projects (which are solo greenfield projects, and don't need to be supported to the same standards as enterprise software) have gained the boost the GP was talking about. At work, it's different, since design, review, and maintenance is much more onerous.
- simonw 5mo ago
  If you want an example of a project that condensed 5 years into 6 months and exploded past the competition I suggest looking at OpenClaw. The first line of code was written on November 25th. It achieved adoption in the "personal agents" space that far exceeded the other companies that had tried the same thing. (Whether or not you trust the quality of the software you can't deny the impact it had in such a short time. It defined a new category of software.)
  - mlsu 5mo ago
    Ideally, the given example would be something not ajacent to the presently white-hot category of "AI agents". Like, look at e.g. YC minus the AI and AI ajacent companies. Are those startups meaningfully more impressive or feature-rich as compared to a couple years ago?
    - simonw 5mo ago
      Not yet, no. I think that's because coding agents got good in November, most people didn't notice until January and it still takes 3-4 months to go from idea to releasing something. I expect we will start seeing the impact of the new coding agent enhanced development processes over the next few months.
  - retinaros 5mo ago
    Its trash vibecoded markdown files around pi. This exemplifies well what op’is saying. We are at the ICO stage of llms. Hopefully there wont be an nft one
    - mschuster91 5mo ago
      As much as I love to hate on AI: even the bad apples still produce something that one can reasonably work with. Cryptocurrencies? Barely any other use than money laundering, buying drugs and betting on the outcome of battles in war. And NFTs? No use at all other than money laundering and setting money ablaze.
      - gck1 5mo ago
        Privacy and security from government overreach is not enough?
        mschuster91 5mo ago
        What privacy? Enough drug dealers have already been busted with solid evidence from trailing the paths on public blockchains.
valcron1000 5mo ago
> if it’s a solo greenfield project That's a big if. I don't have numbers but most professional engineers are not working on such projects
xantronix 5mo ago
The thing is, I don't care any longer. I sincerely believe velocity without direction is not a good strategy for delivering quality in the long term. And that's the thing about it: How sustainable is this velocity, in terms of socioeconomic concerns, product strategy, and mental health?
- user34283 5mo ago
  Velocity without direction? I‘m personally directing and QA testing every feature. I don’t know how socioeconomic concerns, product strategy, and mental health are a concern for me here. I‘m having a great time with my project and it’s been the most fun I‘ve had in many years of building.
nananana9 5mo ago
> and it can now multiply your productivity fivefold if it’s a solo greenfield project. Why do I not see 5x as many interesting greenfield projects than before?
heavyset_go 5mo ago
All of the "solo green field projects" I let LLMs mostly write, despite supplying the scaffolding, structure and specific implementation details as code, prompts or context, I can't tell you much about 6+ months later, except for the parts I did write. It's like I never wrote them, because I didn't. I've got the gist of them, but it's the same way I get the gist of something like Numpy: I know how it works theoretically, but certainly not specifically enough to jump in and write some working Fortran that fixes bugs or adds features. I now have a bunch of stalled projects I'm not very familiar with. I no longer do solo green field projects that way.

atomicnumber3 5mo ago

"many engineers have not yet tried things that became feasible over the last months" I have heard this statement every single day for 2 years and yet we still have no companies compressing 10 years into 1 year thus exploding past all the incumbents who don't "get it".

passivepinetree 5mo ago
Well, the GP mentioned > if it’s a solo greenfield project which is a pretty large caveat. Anecdotally, I've found my side projects (which are solo greenfield projects, and don't need to be supported to the same standards as enterprise software) have gained the boost the GP was talking about. At work, it's different, since design, review, and maintenance is much more onerous.
simonw 5mo ago
If you want an example of a project that condensed 5 years into 6 months and exploded past the competition I suggest looking at OpenClaw. The first line of code was written on November 25th. It achieved adoption in the "personal agents" space that far exceeded the other companies that had tried the same thing. (Whether or not you trust the quality of the software you can't deny the impact it had in such a short time. It defined a new category of software.)
- mlsu 5mo ago
  Ideally, the given example would be something not ajacent to the presently white-hot category of "AI agents". Like, look at e.g. YC minus the AI and AI ajacent companies. Are those startups meaningfully more impressive or feature-rich as compared to a couple years ago?
  - simonw 5mo ago
    Not yet, no. I think that's because coding agents got good in November, most people didn't notice until January and it still takes 3-4 months to go from idea to releasing something. I expect we will start seeing the impact of the new coding agent enhanced development processes over the next few months.
- retinaros 5mo ago
  Its trash vibecoded markdown files around pi. This exemplifies well what op’is saying. We are at the ICO stage of llms. Hopefully there wont be an nft one
  - mschuster91 5mo ago
    As much as I love to hate on AI: even the bad apples still produce something that one can reasonably work with. Cryptocurrencies? Barely any other use than money laundering, buying drugs and betting on the outcome of battles in war. And NFTs? No use at all other than money laundering and setting money ablaze.
    - gck1 5mo ago
      Privacy and security from government overreach is not enough?
      - mschuster91 5mo ago
        What privacy? Enough drug dealers have already been busted with solid evidence from trailing the paths on public blockchains.

valcron1000 5mo ago

> if it’s a solo greenfield project That's a big if. I don't have numbers but most professional engineers are not working on such projects

xantronix 5mo ago

The thing is, I don't care any longer. I sincerely believe velocity without direction is not a good strategy for delivering quality in the long term. And that's the thing about it: How sustainable is this velocity, in terms of socioeconomic concerns, product strategy, and mental health?

user34283 5mo ago
Velocity without direction? I‘m personally directing and QA testing every feature. I don’t know how socioeconomic concerns, product strategy, and mental health are a concern for me here. I‘m having a great time with my project and it’s been the most fun I‘ve had in many years of building.

nananana9 5mo ago

> and it can now multiply your productivity fivefold if it’s a solo greenfield project. Why do I not see 5x as many interesting greenfield projects than before?

heavyset_go 5mo ago

All of the "solo green field projects" I let LLMs mostly write, despite supplying the scaffolding, structure and specific implementation details as code, prompts or context, I can't tell you much about 6+ months later, except for the parts I did write. It's like I never wrote them, because I didn't. I've got the gist of them, but it's the same way I get the gist of something like Numpy: I know how it works theoretically, but certainly not specifically enough to jump in and write some working Fortran that fixes bugs or adds features. I now have a bunch of stalled projects I'm not very familiar with. I no longer do solo green field projects that way.