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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

#211

Post by jwiz »

cvwright wrote: post #167
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made me do a double take with "providence". I think the word you wanted is "provenance", which comes from latin "provenire" (pro -> forth, venire -> come). English has too many similar words. Unless you only run code that's protected by God. That's probably not a bad policy if you can verify it. edit: Oh right, there's an OS for that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

We’re at the point where people who talk too fancy get accused of being LLMs, and the people who make human mistakes get scolded for grammar.

It seems like constructive criticism rather than scolding.

If I were running around saying "providence" instead of "provenance" I would want someone to tell me.

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

#212

Post by globular-toast »

xbmcuser wrote: post #196

I am not a programmer but for me the return is 100x as I am automating stuff that I knew could be automated but did not know how to but at the same time it was not worth the effort to write it down and pay someone to code it for me. But now I have created so many python and bash scripts that save me hours and hours a month. In my opinion the people that can most take advantage of the programing capabilities are peopl…

Now that you only work 3 days a year, what do you do with all the spare time?

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

#213

Post by jaapz »

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.

Not even just building stuff with LLMS.

I'm doing analysis on stuff that we previously simply couldn't do in my company, it would take way too much time or effort, and we didn't have the manpower.

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

#214

Post by t-writescode »

stephenr wrote: post #207
t-writescode wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I've seen. There has been a middle-ground though, that I've seen. I was using Jetbrains' AI Assistant, or whatever it's called, during an interview for the (nearly) first time, and I only used it as auto-complete, but it was consistently, surprisingly, very accurate. I literally did write it faster. I scanned the literal next line, in the context of what I was writing, with all that context in my brain,…

How long ago was this? I tried their "local ai autocomplete" thing a few years ago for a little while and it was hot garbage. It guessed the right/acceptable completion about 30% of the time at best. I haven't looked at it since.

Within the last, like, ... 3 months, I think.

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

#215

Post by mrbnprck »

Xcelerate wrote: post #187

I have a weird issue with using AI for coding. I can code something entirely by myself at my baseline speed; call it 1x. Or I can use Claude to do it, and it does it in 1/10 - 1/4 of the time. The problem, however, is that to review Claude’s code properly takes 2-3x the amount of time it would have taken me to write it all by hand. So my two choices are basically “YOLO, LGTM” and hope I can revert if it breaks someth…

not to forget the cognitive strain of the constant back and forth between LLM and you.

One challenge is when knowing how the code should look like, the LLM solution always looks weird, and one tries to maunally steer against it, so accepting a bit of "good enough" is unavoidable to gain some productivity

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

#216

Post by mkl »

overfeed wrote: post #105
mardef wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Not every engineering effort is a product in search of market fit or a community I think you misunderstood my point: by "legitimate stand-out products", I meant exactly that, with no connotation of commercialization. Maybe you can agree that having a high signal-to-noise ratio for (open source) projects is a desirable goal? > Some things are already very useful as just a one shot. I agree. I too have made or forked…

> by "legitimate stand-out products", I meant exactly that, with no connotation of commercialization

The word "product" implies commercial.

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

#217

Post by sensanaty »

senderista wrote: post #140
steveBK123 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other hard to measure part is that I see/hear a lot of LLM usage going towards dev work that was never prioritized before. Suddenly devs who were cranking out features with no interest in infrastructure are attacking giant refactors to make the code more understandable to the LLM. Other devs are using LLMs to build themselves quality of life SDLC tools completely separate from the core code base. Plenty of other…

You missed documentation. There was never time for that until now.

IME LLM docs are worse than useless the majority of the time. It's like most LLM writing, an inscrutable wall of text that simultaneously says nothing and too much at the same time.

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

#218

Post by overfeed »

mkl wrote: post #216
overfeed wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not every engineering effort is a product in search of market fit or a community I think you misunderstood my point: by "legitimate stand-out products", I meant exactly that, with no connotation of commercialization. Maybe you can agree that having a high signal-to-noise ratio for (open source) projects is a desirable goal? > Some things are already very useful as just a one shot. I agree. I too have made or forked…

> by "legitimate stand-out products", I meant exactly that, with no connotation of commercialization The word "product" implies commercial.

> The word "product" implies commercial.

I disagree; but see where you're coming from. I'm chuckling at the irony of my word-choice: I initially had used "project" but nixed it because of its frequent association with Open Source. I instead opted for "product" as a broader term. For the sake of clarity, my original comment is referring to commercial and non-commercial software projects/products.

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

#219

Post by xbmcuser »

globular-toast wrote: post #212
xbmcuser wrote: post #196

I am not a programmer but for me the return is 100x as I am automating stuff that I knew could be automated but did not know how to but at the same time it was not worth the effort to write it down and pay someone to code it for me. But now I have created so many python and bash scripts that save me hours and hours a month. In my opinion the people that can most take advantage of the programing capabilities are peopl…

Now that you only work 3 days a year, what do you do with all the spare time?

Browse here and reddit and read a lot of fiction and lose a lot of money day trading futres.

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

#220

Post by alex7o »

overfeed wrote: post #105
mardef wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Not every engineering effort is a product in search of market fit or a community I think you misunderstood my point: by "legitimate stand-out products", I meant exactly that, with no connotation of commercialization. Maybe you can agree that having a high signal-to-noise ratio for (open source) projects is a desirable goal? > Some things are already very useful as just a one shot. I agree. I too have made or forked…

Spending 1 day vibecoding or modding an existing app to fit you better and not using it is much better than spending, 2 weeks and then using it from sunk cost falacy.

Also it teaches you that what you think you need and want is not what you need and want. This is why you are not using it

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