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AI coding tools can reduce productivity

secondthoughts.ai

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Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#121

Post by calrain »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #110
calrain wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing, cringe all you want :) I scoped out a body of work and even with the AI assisting on building cards and feature documentation, it came to about 2 to 4 weeks to implement. It was done in 2 days. The key I've found with working as fast as possible is to have planning sessions with Claude Code and make it challenge you and ask tons of questions. Then get it to break the work into 'cards' (think Jira, but…

Did this 20x increase in productivity come with a 20x increase in salary? Do you clock off at Monday lunchtime and spend the rest of the week playing video games? Did your boss fire nineteen developers and give their jobs to you? If one of these things isn’t true, you’re either a fool or those productivity increases aren’t real.

I probably am a fool :)

10x to 20x is in relation to time, so something that would have taken 2 weeks (80 hours) would be done in 8 hours to be 10x.

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#122

Post by notTooFarGone »

gtsop wrote: post #80
calrain wrote: post #57

I've been using Claude Code heavily for about 3 months now, and I'm pretty sure I'm between 10 and 20 times more productive while using it. How I measure performance is how many features I can implement in a given period of time. It's nice that people have done studies and have opinions, but for me, it's 10x to 20x better.

I cringe when I see these numbers. 20 times better means that you can accomplish in two months what you would do in 4 years, which is ridiculus when said out loud. We can make it even more ridiculous by pointing out you would do in 3 years the work of working lifetime (60 years) I am wondering, what sort of tasks are you seeing these x20 boost?

Maybe writing made up HN comments?

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#123

Post by gbalduzzi »

calrain wrote: post #114
iammrpayments wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t believe such numbers. If this was true why don’t you quit your job and vibe code 10 ios apps

I wish I could. Some problems are difficult to solve and I still need to pay the bills. So I work 8 hours a day (to get money to eat) and code another 4 hours at home at night. Weekends are both 10 hour days, and then rinse / repeat. Unfortunately some projects are just hard to do and until now, they were too hard to attempt to solve solo. But with AI assistance, I am literally moving mountains. The project may still…

I don't think you are understanding how big 10x and 20x are.

It means you can replace a whole team of developers alone.

I can believe that some tasks are speed up by 10x or even 20x, but I find very hard to believe it's the average of your productivity (maintaining good code quality)

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#124

Post by halamadrid »

calrain wrote: post #57

I've been using Claude Code heavily for about 3 months now, and I'm pretty sure I'm between 10 and 20 times more productive while using it. How I measure performance is how many features I can implement in a given period of time. It's nice that people have done studies and have opinions, but for me, it's 10x to 20x better.

For the sake of argument 20x means you have basically suddenly got access to 19 people with the same skill set as you.

You can build a new product company with 20 people. Probably in the same domain as you are in right now.

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#125

Post by calrain »

gbalduzzi wrote: post #123
calrain wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could. Some problems are difficult to solve and I still need to pay the bills. So I work 8 hours a day (to get money to eat) and code another 4 hours at home at night. Weekends are both 10 hour days, and then rinse / repeat. Unfortunately some projects are just hard to do and until now, they were too hard to attempt to solve solo. But with AI assistance, I am literally moving mountains. The project may still…

I don't think you are understanding how big 10x and 20x are. It means you can replace a whole team of developers alone. I can believe that some tasks are speed up by 10x or even 20x, but I find very hard to believe it's the average of your productivity (maintaining good code quality)

I mean from a time perspective, your mileage may vary.

So me finishing a carded up block of work that is expected to take 2 weeks (80 hours) and I get it done in 1 day (8 hours) then that would be a 10x boost.

There are always tar pits of time where you are no better off with AI, but sometimes it's 20x.

I've setup development teams in the past, and have have been coding since the late 70's, so I am sort of aware of my capabilities.

It super depends on the type of work you're doing.

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#126

Post by raincole »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #110
calrain wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing, cringe all you want :) I scoped out a body of work and even with the AI assisting on building cards and feature documentation, it came to about 2 to 4 weeks to implement. It was done in 2 days. The key I've found with working as fast as possible is to have planning sessions with Claude Code and make it challenge you and ask tons of questions. Then get it to break the work into 'cards' (think Jira, but…

Did this 20x increase in productivity come with a 20x increase in salary? Do you clock off at Monday lunchtime and spend the rest of the week playing video games? Did your boss fire nineteen developers and give their jobs to you? If one of these things isn’t true, you’re either a fool or those productivity increases aren’t real.

Being 20x increase in productivity won't come with a 20x money made. Unless you somehow monopoly the extra productivity.

A simple example: if someone patents a machine that makes canned tuna 10 times faster than how they're currently being made, would tuna factories make 10 times more money? The answer is obviously no. Actually, they'd make the same money as before, or even less than that. Only the one who makes such a machine (and the consumers of tuna cans) would be benefited.

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#127

Post by graemep »

jaredklewis wrote: post #55
tomcam wrote: post #16

What bothers me more than any of this particular discussion is that we seem to be incapable of determining programmer productivity in a meaningful way since my debut as a programmer 40 years ago.

I’m confused as to why anyone would think this would be possible to determine. Like can we determine the productivity of doctors, lawyers, journalists, or pastry chefs? What job out there is so simple that we can meaningfully measure all the positive and negative effects of the worker as well as account for different conditions between workers. I could probably get behind the idea that you could measure productivity…

People in charge love to measure productivity and, just as harmfully, performance. The main insight people running large organisations (big business and governments) have into how they are doing is metrics, so they will use what measures they can have regardless of how meaningful they are.

The British government (probably not any worse than anyone else, just what I am most familiar with) does measure the productivity of the NHS: https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/nhs-productivity/ (including doctors, obviously).

They also try to measure the performance of teachers and schools and introduced performance league tables and special exams (SATS - exams sat at various ages school children in the state system, nothing like the American exams with the same name) to do this more pervasively. They made it better by creating multi-academy trusts which adds a layer of management running multi-schools so even more people want even more metrics.

The same for police, and pretty much everything else.

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#128

Post by graemep »

journal wrote: post #34
tomcam wrote: post #16

What bothers me more than any of this particular discussion is that we seem to be incapable of determining programmer productivity in a meaningful way since my debut as a programmer 40 years ago.

what about the $ you make? isn't that an indicator? you've probably made more than me, so you are more successful while both of us might be doing the same thing.

It is from a certain point of view. For example at a national level productivity is measured in GDP per hour worked. Even this is problematic - it means you increase productivity by reducing working hours or making low paid workers unemployed.

ON the other hand it makes no sense from some points of view. For example, if you get a pay rise that does not mean you are more productive.

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#129

Post by rightbyte »

gtsop wrote: post #80
calrain wrote: post #57

I've been using Claude Code heavily for about 3 months now, and I'm pretty sure I'm between 10 and 20 times more productive while using it. How I measure performance is how many features I can implement in a given period of time. It's nice that people have done studies and have opinions, but for me, it's 10x to 20x better.

I cringe when I see these numbers. 20 times better means that you can accomplish in two months what you would do in 4 years, which is ridiculus when said out loud. We can make it even more ridiculous by pointing out you would do in 3 years the work of working lifetime (60 years) I am wondering, what sort of tasks are you seeing these x20 boost?

> in two months what you would do in 4 years

There should be a FOSS project explosion if those numbers were true by now. Commercial products too.

Re: AI coding tools can reduce productivity

#130

Post by thinkingemote »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #112
thinkingemote wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree I feel more productive. AI tools do actually make it easier and makes my brain use less energy. You would think that would be more productive but maybe it just feels that way. Stage magicians say that the magic is done in the audiences memory after the trick is done. It's the effect of the activity. AI coding tools makes developers happier and able to spend more brain power on actually difficult things. But o…

> Waze the navigation app routes you in non standard routes so that you are not stuck in traffic, so it feels fast that you are making progress. But the time taken may be longer and the distance travelled may be further! You're not "stuck in traffic", you are the traffic . If the app distributes users around and this makes it so they don't end up in traffic jams, it's effectively preventing traffic jams from forming…

Yeah I totally agree. It's like washing by hand vs using a mangle possibly. The metaphor of agents to machines was also what I thought but didn't write as it's about companion tools mainly. (I got confused and put in a high level comment but somehow didn't actually post that!)

For Waze, even if you are traffic and others go around you, you still may get there quicker and your car use less energy than taking the suggested route that feels faster. Others may feel happier and feel like they were faster though. Indeed they were faster but might have taken a longer journey.

Also, generally most people don't use the app around here to effect significant road use changes. But if they did im not sure (but I'm having fun trying to think) what metaphor we can apply to the current topic :)

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