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Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

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Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#21

Post by pydry »

tyleo wrote: post #9
lordkrandel wrote: post #4

Why do people keep ralking about AI as it actually worked? I still don't see ANY proof that it doesn't generate a total unmaintainable unsecure mess, that since you didn't develop, you don't know how to fix. Like running a F1 Ferrari on a countryside road: useless and dangerous

Because it's working for a lot of people. There are people getting value from these products right now. I'm getting value myself and I know several other folks at work who are getting value. I'm not sure what your circumstances are but even if it's not true for you, it's true for many other people.

It's interesting that the people IRL I encounter who "get the most value" tend to be the devs who couldnt distinguish well written code from slop in the first place.

People online with identical views to them all assure me that theyre all highly skilled though.

Meanwhile I've been experimenting using AI for shopping and all of them so far are horrendous. Cant handle basic queries without tripping over themselves.

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#22

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

Developers are going to be more productive, just not how you think. If history is going to rhyme, then the software industry will enter into a self-serving productivity craze building all sorts of software tooling, frameworks, ralph wiggum loop variants, MCPs, etc. much like the surge in JS frameworks and variants in the past. Most of those things will not have any business value. Software devs, myself included, love to do things "because I can" and not necessarily because they should.

Smart organizations will not just deliver better products but likely start products that they were hesitant to start before because the cost of starting is a lot closer to zero. Smart engineering leadership will encourage developers into delivering value and not self-serving, endless iterations of tooling enhancements, etc.

If I was a CTO and my competitor Y fired 90% of their devs, I'd try to secure funding to hire their top talent and retain them. The vitriol alone could fuel some interesting creations and when competitor Y realizes things later, their top talent will have moved on.

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#23

Post by FromTheFirstIn »

the_real_cher wrote: post #8
lordkrandel wrote: post #4

Why do people keep ralking about AI as it actually worked? I still don't see ANY proof that it doesn't generate a total unmaintainable unsecure mess, that since you didn't develop, you don't know how to fix. Like running a F1 Ferrari on a countryside road: useless and dangerous

Yeah its great but as the OP said you have to watch every P.R. like a hawk

OP said you stop doing that at some point

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#24

Post by lukev »

lordkrandel wrote: post #4

Why do people keep ralking about AI as it actually worked? I still don't see ANY proof that it doesn't generate a total unmaintainable unsecure mess, that since you didn't develop, you don't know how to fix. Like running a F1 Ferrari on a countryside road: useless and dangerous

I agree, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and we currently have a lot of developers who feel very productive right now.

We are very much in need of an actual way to measure real economic impact of AI-assisted coding, over both shorter and longer time horizons.

There's been an absolute rash of vibecoded startups. Are we seeing better success rates or sales across the industry?

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#25

Post by marcyb5st »

If I were to run the company potentially mostly focus on better products with the exception of firing those that don't adopt the technology.

If it is a big company the answer is and will always be: whatever makes the stock price rise the most.

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#26

Post by dominotw »

fragmede wrote: post #20
dominotw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so where are these one man products lauched in a month? not talking about toys or vibecoded crap no one uses.

Aside from the things people have launched that don't count because I'm right, where are the things that have been launched?

apps with actual users is too high of a bar now?

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#27

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

lukev wrote: post #24
lordkrandel wrote: post #4

Why do people keep ralking about AI as it actually worked? I still don't see ANY proof that it doesn't generate a total unmaintainable unsecure mess, that since you didn't develop, you don't know how to fix. Like running a F1 Ferrari on a countryside road: useless and dangerous

I agree, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and we currently have a lot of developers who feel very productive right now. We are very much in need of an actual way to measure real economic impact of AI-assisted coding, over both shorter and longer time horizons. There's been an absolute rash of vibecoded startups. Are we seeing better success rates or sales across the industry?

> "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"

That's the same false argument that the religious have offered for their beliefs and was debunked by Bertrand Russell's teapot argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#29

Post by Throaway1975123 »

dominotw wrote: post #26
fragmede wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from the things people have launched that don't count because I'm right, where are the things that have been launched?

apps with actual users is too high of a bar now?

probs look in the game space to see a bunch of muggles making money off of "vibe coded" software

Re: Ask HN: AI productivity gains – do you fire devs or build better products?

#30

Post by Throaway1975123 »

_wire_ wrote: post #3

"I just got my third coffee and I'm feeling really good about the quality of this code. I don't even bother to look at it. Keeps my tests simple to not test at all. You know, 'in theory'. Of course when the architecture gets genuinely tangled... Just keep your IDE open so the code knows where to go. Whoa, too much caffeine, super sleepy..." Terafab is suddenly making so much sense!

"ugh, what a hard day at work, I had to prompt the LLM for 8 hours!!"
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