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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

#231

Post by gymbeaux »

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.

I often use LLMs to build locally running web apps and console apps that I otherwise never would have built, because the value-add wouldn’t be worth, say, 40 hours of my free time.

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

#232

Post by cyanregiment »

didibus wrote: post #165
cyanregiment wrote: post #39

0.25x because I scope bigger now and then I may get a few "free" React components but largely doing all that work of putting it together. Wouldn't trade it though. Feel like I can overall do more with less time and energy. At the end of the day, AI is making me work more (good thing). If you count that as productivity, then sure.

> AI is making me work more (good thing) How is that good?

I wrote a whole thing and realized the answer is a lot more philosophical.

I don't know why working more is good.

Maybe its dormant Protestant work ethic still finding a use case in my secular mind

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

#233

Post by sejje »

jwiz wrote: post #211
cvwright wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me too, but we're the minority. Most people are rolling their eyes every time this happens. They don't want constructive criticism any more than they want normal criticism.

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

#234

Post by sejje »

bloaf wrote: post #173
nathell wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ideas worth pursuing still require substantial time and motivation, even with LLMs. Otherwise you just end up with a half-baked sloppy artifact that nobody will ever use or study, for a net negative benefit to humanity.

We have entered the era of small software, and no one knows what it will grow to. Here's an example: my office has a few cars for employees to use as rentals. The number is small enough that it would never be worth any serious software dev to build a tool to manage, but large enough that its a moderate amount of work for someone to manage the requests/getting supervisor approvals/schedule changes due to breakdowns. A…

I agree.

In my business, I haven't found much area to use code. It's a pub, and we've long been low-tech. Cash register, no POS. I have a little code surrounding my own processes, but mostly it's manual. Hand-entering numbers in my spreadsheet, etc.

But what's interesting to me is that now I can probably program an esp32, or create a small mobile app for a mounted android tablet. I was a web dev in the past, and programming hardware was outside my skillset without dedicating some serious time to learning. Mobile I just always avoided--mostly the same reason.

Anyway, I've got some CYDs on my desk, we'll see what I can make with 'em. I want a kitchen ticketing system instead of the old hand-written ticket stubs, for starters.

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

#235

Post by soperj »

heaney-555 wrote: post #78
soperj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> allows me to do things not only faster, but better, and across domains I do not hold expertise on. How would you know it's better when you have no expertise?

Because it produces the desired output. The purpose of a program. There are many domains where an intelligent human can act as a discriminator for output without knowing exactly in precise detail how the process itself works.

We had contractors come in to do a project for us once, they had a team of programmers in India as well as a team on the ground. The team in India would produce a bunch of code for them during the night, and they'd review it, and carry on. Things were being done very quickly. Management was happy. Finally after months of this they let us review their code. Turns out that the contractors were just reviewing the output, and they were nailing it. The code itself was absolutely unmaintainable. There was clearly one programmer that had never heard of a jsp, and wrote all of his java to produce html within the java code itself, and another who wrote all of their business logic in scriplets in the jsps themselves. Years later we finally got the okay from management to refactor the whole project. That refactoring project reduced the deployable artifact from over 700mb, to just under 40mb. It reduced a ton of security vulnerabilities and made the code vastly more maintainable, and significantly more performant.

The purpose of a program shouldn't be the only consideration unless it's 1 off scripts.

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

#236

Post by coderatlarge »

rayiner wrote: post #198
coderatlarge wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i consider it as a very specialized subset (subgenre) of video games for a very narrow audience

You know how non-coders basically build crazy business apps in Excel? LLMs, even if they don't get any better, seem at least 10x more useful than Excel. Why do you say it's for a narrow audience?

i meant people who enjoy the idea of software even if they don’t necessarily need or enjoy the resulting software itself. it’s possible that some of the spreadsheet hacking has a similar flavor but lacks the natural language hook.

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

#237

Post by sejje »

chr15m wrote: post #192
throwuxiytayq wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Claude lies, like all LLMs today.

Oh, right. Let's throw it all in the trash, totally useless

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

#238

Post by sejje »

fg137 wrote: post #106

I recently removed about 50% of code in a feature submitted by a colleague, because it's a pile of over-engineered mess that either never gets used or caused trouble for us. We probably would not have added the code in the first place if we actually discussed the design. With the code removed, the feature is now much simpler and more maintenable. And that's the second time this happened over the past few months.

One time before LLMs we outsourced this project. It was something to sign file headers, written in ruby by an overseas company. It was something like 4500 lines long, and I wound up reducing it to something like 550 lines.

My story, like yours, has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

It happened many times to me, as well. Humans write terrible code.

You didn't even mention if the code you're talking about was generated or not.

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

#239

Post by sejje »

soperj wrote: post #54
ericol wrote: post #51

I'm not sure about the x, but the first thing that arises from that is, I feel like in my case it's way higher than 2. The 2nd thing is, how do I measure that. --- In my case, the details of my work (Kinda DevOps, kinda Senior Dev) makes it that having an LLM to do the heavy lifting allows me to do things not only faster, but better, and across domains I do not hold expertise on. An example of the effect of LLMs in m…

> allows me to do things not only faster, but better, and across domains I do not hold expertise on. How would you know it's better when you have no expertise?

He didn't say that. He said [with my re-puncuation of it]:

"...allows me to do things not only faster, but better. And [allows me to do things] across domains I do not hold expertise on."

I have also done things in domains I don't hold expertise on. I'm a web dev, but I built a terminal TUI client yesterday. In a language I don't write.

He didn't say THAT was better, he said he's doing things faster and better. Presumably he's able to measure many of those things against how he did them before.

In the case of new domains, I know I can produce better output than my previous self, because the output compiles and does what I want. Previously I could not produce compiling output that did what I want. It's definitely better now.

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

#240

Post by sejje »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #94
heaney-555 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it produces the desired output. The purpose of a program. There are many domains where an intelligent human can act as a discriminator for output without knowing exactly in precise detail how the process itself works.

That is certainly true, but there are also many cases where someone without core expertise who believes themselves to be a capable discriminator actually is not.

Welcome to Earth. I see people parading as experts in all kinds of things all the time, without LLMs to back them up. Political opinions, economic theory, foreign policy, professional sports strategy, who is or isn't intelligent. People blast their very uninformed opinions about these constantly, without realizing they're uninformed.

This is a human thing, not an LLM thing.

I even have a pet joke about it. Like yesterday I built something in Rust with the LLM -- I'm a total novice in rust. I said "I'm so happy I became an expert in rust today." I built a shed, "so glad I'm an expert carpenter." Some -- maybe most -- people really attach that pin to their lapel with the same amount of experience.

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