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> Many people are seeing huge gains in coding productivity with AI. I don't want to speak for the person you replied to, but I think that their main point is..

> Many people are seeing huge gains in coding productivity with AI. I don't want to speak for the person you replied to, but I think that their main point is... are they? I see lots of articles about huge increases in productivity, but I think it's fair to argue that we've yet to see the huge increases in useful products that would surely (we hope) result from that if it were true.

megaloblasto 1y ago
I'm speaking just to coding productivity. I think AI does very little for business development or creativity type issues. People should realize that denying that AI can boost productivity in coding makes it look like they don't know how to use it, or believe in some conspiracy that no one is actually benefitting and it's all market hype from tech bros.
- bgwalter 1y ago
  This is Gavin Belson level stuff.
- jayd16 1y ago
  I admit that I don't know how to use it and it does seem like marketing hype and tech bros with some mild value and I'm waiting to be proven wrong and crushed, John Henry the Steel Driving Man style, and it's just not happening.
  - megaloblasto 1y ago
    There are a lot of different niches to software development. It could be that your specific niche isn't seeing much benefit yet. However, continuing to hold onto a view that AI is hype garbage could very possibly hurt your career in the near future.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  I believe in some conspiracy that no one is actually benefitting. I don't want to blame marketing, it's genuinely very cool that I can give Cursor a description of what I'm trying to do and get a result that's like 80% correct. But I've repeatedly found that going from 80% to 100% takes just as much time and effort as it would have to do it myself from the start. I've shadowed people who believe AI is helping them, and it seems to me that some of them don't notice how much effort they're spending while others don't bother to correct the 80% version once tests are passing.
  - tbrownaw 1y ago
    Doesn't need a conspiracy, just excessive enthusiasm about the new shiny that hasn't been tempered by experience and reflection yet.
- mattmanser 1y ago
  If they were, where are their products and open source projects? Let's circle back. One thing I've noticed about the super-AI enthusiasts on HN is that not a single one ever have a single comment linking to a repo of work they've made with it. I check. I actually always do because I'm really keen to learn how to use these magical super-AI workflows. I've watched streams, replicated clause MD files, tried all the context tricks. I'm not even saying AI doesn't help, it's great for getting me over the blank page writer's block. It's just not great at much else. So I've just checked your comments and not only do you not have any examples of your super-duper AI skills, but it looks like you've been in the industry less than a year, graduating from a PhD last year? You also admit it took you a week trying to debug a problem before an AI fixed it for you. Because you'd missed some parentheses in an algo. I'm not trying to shame you, but that does signal your inexperience. If you'd have made the code well and easy to test, you should have spotted your bad algo quickly. So is it that we're all bad at using AI? Or is it that AI benefits inexperienced programmers more?
  - megaloblasto 1y ago
    Damn bro. Deep dive into the comments. The bad algo was a scaling problem for one equation. That particular equation wasn't some y = mx + b thing, it was the result of a discontinuous galerkin finite element scheme that I wrote from scratch. The actual equation was one that I found after about 2 pages of hand written derivations with high level math. Not really a coding issue, just an algebra issue after really intense manipulations of partial differential equations. The fact that AI found that problem, a problem that could only be found by someone able to do complex manipulations of PDEs is incredible to me. Perhaps I didn't tell the story well in the past comment, but it isn't like I didn't know python syntax and AI held my hand. I don't post repos because I keep my hacker news life separate from my personal life, and my repos are tied to my name. Most major software companies are demanding that their employees use AI, so you should be able to look at any open repo from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc for examples of AI use in code.
    - wolvesechoes 1y ago
      I, on the other hand, tried to vibe-code BDF-like ODE solver. Not some rough prototype, because I can do the rough prototype easily myself, but something robust and fast, with event handling etc. AI couldn't do it. Actually it couldn't do correctly anything more complex than out-of-the-textbook explicit RK4, but this is something undergrad students do while learning numerical methods for the first time. And solvers are actually a simpler aspect of the project I am working on. It also includes (or rather aims to include) optimizing compiler with DAE to ODE reduction, advanced numerical debugging etc. This is why these discussions are pointless - AI works well for some people in some contexts, for others not so much, yet both sides extrapolate their experience as universal.

megaloblasto 1y ago

I'm speaking just to coding productivity. I think AI does very little for business development or creativity type issues. People should realize that denying that AI can boost productivity in coding makes it look like they don't know how to use it, or believe in some conspiracy that no one is actually benefitting and it's all market hype from tech bros.

bgwalter 1y ago
This is Gavin Belson level stuff.
jayd16 1y ago
I admit that I don't know how to use it and it does seem like marketing hype and tech bros with some mild value and I'm waiting to be proven wrong and crushed, John Henry the Steel Driving Man style, and it's just not happening.
- megaloblasto 1y ago
  There are a lot of different niches to software development. It could be that your specific niche isn't seeing much benefit yet. However, continuing to hold onto a view that AI is hype garbage could very possibly hurt your career in the near future.
SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
I believe in some conspiracy that no one is actually benefitting. I don't want to blame marketing, it's genuinely very cool that I can give Cursor a description of what I'm trying to do and get a result that's like 80% correct. But I've repeatedly found that going from 80% to 100% takes just as much time and effort as it would have to do it myself from the start. I've shadowed people who believe AI is helping them, and it seems to me that some of them don't notice how much effort they're spending while others don't bother to correct the 80% version once tests are passing.
- tbrownaw 1y ago
  Doesn't need a conspiracy, just excessive enthusiasm about the new shiny that hasn't been tempered by experience and reflection yet.
mattmanser 1y ago
If they were, where are their products and open source projects? Let's circle back. One thing I've noticed about the super-AI enthusiasts on HN is that not a single one ever have a single comment linking to a repo of work they've made with it. I check. I actually always do because I'm really keen to learn how to use these magical super-AI workflows. I've watched streams, replicated clause MD files, tried all the context tricks. I'm not even saying AI doesn't help, it's great for getting me over the blank page writer's block. It's just not great at much else. So I've just checked your comments and not only do you not have any examples of your super-duper AI skills, but it looks like you've been in the industry less than a year, graduating from a PhD last year? You also admit it took you a week trying to debug a problem before an AI fixed it for you. Because you'd missed some parentheses in an algo. I'm not trying to shame you, but that does signal your inexperience. If you'd have made the code well and easy to test, you should have spotted your bad algo quickly. So is it that we're all bad at using AI? Or is it that AI benefits inexperienced programmers more?
- megaloblasto 1y ago
  Damn bro. Deep dive into the comments. The bad algo was a scaling problem for one equation. That particular equation wasn't some y = mx + b thing, it was the result of a discontinuous galerkin finite element scheme that I wrote from scratch. The actual equation was one that I found after about 2 pages of hand written derivations with high level math. Not really a coding issue, just an algebra issue after really intense manipulations of partial differential equations. The fact that AI found that problem, a problem that could only be found by someone able to do complex manipulations of PDEs is incredible to me. Perhaps I didn't tell the story well in the past comment, but it isn't like I didn't know python syntax and AI held my hand. I don't post repos because I keep my hacker news life separate from my personal life, and my repos are tied to my name. Most major software companies are demanding that their employees use AI, so you should be able to look at any open repo from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc for examples of AI use in code.
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    I, on the other hand, tried to vibe-code BDF-like ODE solver. Not some rough prototype, because I can do the rough prototype easily myself, but something robust and fast, with event handling etc. AI couldn't do it. Actually it couldn't do correctly anything more complex than out-of-the-textbook explicit RK4, but this is something undergrad students do while learning numerical methods for the first time. And solvers are actually a simpler aspect of the project I am working on. It also includes (or rather aims to include) optimizing compiler with DAE to ODE reduction, advanced numerical debugging etc. This is why these discussions are pointless - AI works well for some people in some contexts, for others not so much, yet both sides extrapolate their experience as universal.