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Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

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Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#31

Post by UtopiaPunk »

csomar wrote: post #17
Terr_ wrote: post #2

> McKinsey stated AI could “automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today” across all occupations, not specifically software development. I would wager a large portion of that would be both generating and then triaging a certain level of institutional "bullshit communications". For example, the employee must give daily status updates, and they have a three-item list for the day. They…

LLM biggest productivity boost might uncovering that most of the work we do is B.S. anyway and mostly made up of pushing papers around.

Haha, in my workplace, I feel it's making me come up with BS. I do use it occasionally in my job, and it can be helpful. But there's a very strong push from my C-suite to make everyone in the company use more AI. Doesn't really matter how, we're just supposed to be rubbing AI on stuff. So a few times a day I boop our AI tools and find excuses to mention to my boss that I did an AI thing.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#32

Post by Our_Benefactors »

bandrami wrote: post #15
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they should be. It’s a necessary tool to learn. If your entire dev team circa 2010 was writing code in notepad++ and sharing code versions in a zip file, you would push them to use an IDE and source control. It’s the same concept.

Why should it be necessary to adopt a tool that reduces your productivity by 20%?

Please provide supporting evidence of this wild claim.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#33

Post by Our_Benefactors »

Terr_ wrote: post #14
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they should be. It’s a necessary tool to learn. If your entire dev team circa 2010 was writing code in notepad++ and sharing code versions in a zip file, you would push them to use an IDE and source control. It’s the same concept.

That's true insofar as there is friction to adoption. But whether $THING should be adopted and whether it does increase long-term productivity is nowhere near as clear-cut.

Have you used it? It should be, and does.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#34

Post by sixtyj »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #27
techblueberry wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol and Chamath is over here saying vibe coding is overhyped: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoCodeSaaS/comments/1mvb3tm/chamath... Professional coders are the only ones who can get anything real out of llms(well, maybe a 19% decrease in productivity but it’s not fake. Do you have a source on that “impact is monumental for non developers”? Because most of what I’ve been reading is that group is mostly vaporware.

There is a big gulf between the know-nothing vibe-coding and a professional programmer using a LLM, with lots and lots of people somewhere in the middle, who can code, but is slow at it because they are always learning on the fly, coding just a few hours a week, targeted at small goals, like data wrangling in a pipeline, small applications to replace clunky and error prone Excel books. No, I don't have a study to bac…

Differences in LLM usage are common, so I guess we'll just "argue" here :)

Yesterday I was discussing with the head of a company that has been developing software for 30 years, and he told me that they had some old assembly code left, the original programmer retired years ago, so they converted the code with the help of LLM...

I use LLM to create scripts for various manipulations and data extraction from documents, once I managed to create a working "Wikipedia" after several attempts to make prompt as accurate as possible...

The question is not whether I could have done it, but how long it would have taken me without LLM.

But looking for bugs in "someone else's" code I created is a scary, frustrating job, especially when LLM hallucinates extensively somewhere in the middle of the work :)

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#35

Post by Terr_ »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #32
bandrami wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be necessary to adopt a tool that reduces your productivity by 20%?

Please provide supporting evidence of this wild claim.

I suggest checking the HN submission before giving up.

> Most alarmingly, the METR study found experienced developers took 19% longer with AI tools, despite believing they’d sped up by 20%.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#37

Post by bandrami »

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #33
Terr_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true insofar as there is friction to adoption. But whether $THING should be adopted and whether it does increase long-term productivity is nowhere near as clear-cut.

Have you used it? It should be, and does.

Did you read the article? It cites the METR study[1] which showed that while people using AI tools to program report feeling like they are producing more, they are in fact producing about 20% less than without the tools.

Ironically you could get the same effect and save compute fees by simply having programmers stay home one day a week.

[1] https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#38

Post by anothernewdude »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #18

Look, maybe AI for professional programming is overhyped, but for the huge number of professionals who need to program as a part of their job, but programming is decidedly NOT their job, but who do not have programmers available to them, LLM's are.monunmental. For these people, these LLMs are huge productivity enhancers. We shouldn't be measuring productivity gain by professional programmers, but by the larger popula…

As a contractor who cleans up slop projects, I couldn't be happier.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#39

Post by 000ooo000 »

bandrami wrote: post #36
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide supporting evidence of this wild claim.

Literally in the article posted

If you want to shit talk LLMs, you better come armed with research, buddy. Claims about how it will revolutionise every profession just need n=1 anecdata though.

Re: Is AI a Bubble? I Didn't Think So Until I Heard of SDD

#40

Post by soco »

sixtyj wrote: post #34
SubiculumCode wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big gulf between the know-nothing vibe-coding and a professional programmer using a LLM, with lots and lots of people somewhere in the middle, who can code, but is slow at it because they are always learning on the fly, coding just a few hours a week, targeted at small goals, like data wrangling in a pipeline, small applications to replace clunky and error prone Excel books. No, I don't have a study to bac…

Differences in LLM usage are common, so I guess we'll just "argue" here :) Yesterday I was discussing with the head of a company that has been developing software for 30 years, and he told me that they had some old assembly code left, the original programmer retired years ago, so they converted the code with the help of LLM... I use LLM to create scripts for various manipulations and data extraction from documents, o…

The question is, will the vibe coder care at all about those bugs? Will the company using vibe coded apps care about those bugs? Or they will just add another requirement to the prompt and churn out the next version? Yes, they will never have a guarantee this new version will be better, but arguably most software products don't have such guarantees either. So are we users worse off or the same? Because if we're about the same, and the producer saves a shitload of money, you can guess where the future is.
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