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2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

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Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#151

Post by techpression »

kypro wrote: post #102
techpression wrote: post #67

I spent 30min with Opus 5 generating some CSS and components for my Phoenix LiveView template project (which I use for starting new projects). Then I spent around 5 hours parsing and cleaning up the output. I could of course not have done that, but since it's my spare time project I can care about the code and quality. I did get wins for sure (and I did save time), and I'm sure most people wouldn't even spend five mi…

> but since it's my spare time project I can care about the code and quality. I suppose it's yet to be seen, but I'm seeing a lot of spaghetti code being dump into the codebase I'm working on at the moment by other devs. I don't think it's wrong per se, but human code would have thought more about the right abstractions and trade-offs for future maintainability. There is a gap right now between what an AI can and can…

Everyone can drive really fast if you give them a fast car, but very few can stay on the road when driving fast. LLMs are like free supercars for everyone, except people know nothing about how supercars work or how to drive them. Same thing with software, going fast is incredibly hard if you do it for any period of time, and I think this is something we will read more about in a couple of years, not that human written code never turned out to be complete disasters, but I believe with LLMs we will see at a completely different scale. And yes, car analogies suck.

Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#152

Post by pron »

pantelisk wrote: post #55

While I agree with the premise, I think this angle only applies on work one was going to do no matter what. The real power of these tools is that there are so many ideas people would like to try, but never have the time or motivation to pursue. So the comparison is not only "built with and without LLM" but "would you even build this if you didn't have the LLM?". The gap in productivity in this case is much more wide.

Yes, but only in the programming sense of productivity, not in the economic sense. When prices stop being subsidised and the novelty wears off, this will boil down to the question of how much money is that worth? We're already seeing an inflation in such projects, which are becoming hard to even show off. It could be similar to 3D printers. Fun and valuable, with a market size of $25B, but not quite world-changing (I'm not saying AI won't be world-changing, only that this tinkering aspect may not be).

Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#153

Post by bigbuppo »

There's someone I know that jumped head-first into AI... they have embraced everything agentic. While setting up mail on their new iphone they encountered a problem. They had claude go through and do a bunch of tests against the server... allegedly. It didn't do any actual testing, though it did generate a long-winded report of what it pretended to try, fully blaming the server the whole time.

Actual problem: he typed in the wrong password

Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#154

Post by dools »

serial_dev wrote: post #83
altern8 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is great because my job is a lot easier, but it produces some extremely crappy code that would've NEVER passed a code review 1 year ago. You could argue that it speeds up development by 5X or more, but then it slows down testing/verifying, code review, and in many cases it makes it impossible to review/rework by hand. I just do what I'm told at work but even though I'm sure I'm in the minority I'm extremely skepti…

> it produces some extremely crappy code that would've NEVER passed a code review 1 year ago The 10x speed up comes from the fact that we have all given up on properly reviewing each others code and we just say “meh, it will be fine, lgtm”

Code review has always been pointless

Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#155

Post by twister2920 »

mardef wrote: post #92
overfeed wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real power of these tools is that there are so many ideas people would like to try, but never have the time or motivation to pursue. This can be a negative multiplier: code I thought I wanted that gets immediately abandoned is a net-negative if no one else wants it (lets face it, this is the safest default posture for software of unknown providence). In isolation, instant-abandonware takes up hdd space, burns d…

Not every engineering effort is a product in search of market fit or a community. Some things are already very useful as just a one shot. I just made a quick app to help me pack for a trip, it updated forecasts every day, let me know when rain entered the forecast at one of my stops and gave me a checklist that helped me quell my travel anxiety. The greatest thing that LLMs have done is allow many to achieve things t…

> gave me a checklist that helped me quell my travel anxiety.

it's truly fascinating how many positive descriptions of AI gesture at emotional management. I think that's the killer feature of this technology -- it makes people feel good, capable, reassured -- without the risk and vulnerability of interacting with another human.

I use Google Weather for my forecasts btw, no need to vibecode an app for that

Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#157

Post by tristor »

wannabe44 wrote: post #44
tristor wrote: post #25

My observation is that AI tools generally make people /less/ productive. They are more productive in that they produce more stuff, but they are less productive in that the stuff they are producing has lower inherent value delivery. The primary place where I see this in software teams as a Product person is in document creation. If you are using an AI tool to produce internal documents, this is likely a net-negative v…

Have you worked with codebases where people produced slop even before LLMs? In such codebases LLMs are a godsend. They can churn around huge amounts of code and find needles in the haystack.

Since I'm on the Product side these days, I don't spend much time delving into the codebase at this point in my career. I can believe it though, as I've done quite a few personal side projects using langchain and various harnesses. The problem I see is not necessarily that LLMs build things badly (although I know that can also be true), its that because people are using LLMs to generate documents, we are then building the wrong thing entirely (whether with an LLM or not, whether badly or not).

Removing human thought from the process of development is generally a net negative, IMO.

Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#158

Post by bthornbury »

LearnYouALisp wrote: post #142
bthornbury wrote: post #115

for me, almost all of the work is specs I am no longer: - reading docs for hours and hours - typing (barely at all) - writing code - manually doing tight debug loops - using an IDE to do this I had to give up reading or even controlling the code and focusing on behavior/design-level control (not superficial, still dictating overall technical architecture) i have agents doing everything from writing the code, verifyin…

How much does it cost in GPU rental?

codex pro plan currently

Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#159

Post by twister2920 »

bthornbury wrote: post #115

for me, almost all of the work is specs I am no longer: - reading docs for hours and hours - typing (barely at all) - writing code - manually doing tight debug loops - using an IDE to do this I had to give up reading or even controlling the code and focusing on behavior/design-level control (not superficial, still dictating overall technical architecture) i have agents doing everything from writing the code, verifyin…

> to do this I had to give up reading or even controlling the code and focusing on behavior/design-level control (not superficial, still dictating overall technical architecture)

how do you verify the behavior? are you still writing or at least reading tests or just doing manual testing?

Re: 2x, not 10x: coding with LLMs in 2026

#160

Post by throwuxiytayq »

bigbuppo wrote: post #153

There's someone I know that jumped head-first into AI... they have embraced everything agentic. While setting up mail on their new iphone they encountered a problem. They had claude go through and do a bunch of tests against the server... allegedly. It didn't do any actual testing, though it did generate a long-winded report of what it pretended to try, fully blaming the server the whole time. Actual problem: he type…

Not sure what your point is, could you clarify? Are you saying that your friend is stupid? Or do you mean Claude is stupid? Both?
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