Comment by danieldk

I think the people who claim 10x-100x productivity improvements are working on tasks where LLMs work really well. There is a lot of development work out there that is relatively simple CRUD and LLMs are very good at it. On the complete opposite end we have designing new algorithms/data structures or extending them in a novel way. Or implementing drivers for new hardware from incomplete specs. LLMs do not do well on these tasks or even slow down developers 10x.

So, I think the claims of improvement in productivity and regression in productivity can be true at the same time (and it's not just that people who don't find using LLMs productive are just prompting them wrong).

I think most can be gained by learning in which areas LLMs can give large productivity boosts and where it's better to avoid using them. Of course, this is a continuous process, given that LLMs are still getting better.

Personally, I am quite happy with LLMs. They cannot replace me, but they can do a chunk of the boring/repetitive work (e.g. boilerplate), so as a result I can focus on the interesting problems. As long as we don't have human-like performance (and I don't feel like we are close yet), LLMs make programming more interesting.

They are also a great learning aid. E.g., this morning I wanted to make a 3D model for something I needed, but I don't know OpenSCAD. I iteratively made the design with Claude. At some point the problem becomes too difficult for Claude, but with the code generated at that point, I have learned enough about OpenSCAD that I can fix the more difficult parts of the project. The project would have taken me a few hours (to learn the language, etc.), but now I was done in 30 minutes and learned some OpenSCAD in a pleasant way.