[boesboes]

This. AI replacing all software engineers? Hype. Me, a SE with 20 years experience, using AI to do the heavy lifting of refactoring 2500 code points and corresponding tests, so that i can focus on what is the correct solution? That works very nicely. Or just last week, I managed to do some research into how (we think) the brain works, and draft a position paper based on the research and my thoughts in a day or two, instead of weeks. I don't care about AGI, or wether LLMs might approach that, or wether LLMs 'are just autocompletion'. It lets me focus on the things that matter more in my work. It still has a long way to go, but claude code is pretty decent at doing menial jobs for me already

[kevindamm]

It's a power saw, or screw gun, but not a Tunnel Boring Machine. When the task is big enough, it goes a little off the rails. With guidance, and persistence, you can churn out a lot of code with barely more than supervisory effort.

I somewhat agree with both your and GP perspectives. It's getting more hype than it has earned, and the promise that this path leads to AGI, despite 10× sizes of models yielding diminishing returns on performance. But it's not vaporware, it can produce fluent text faster and cheaper than humans, so it doesn't go in the "why are they buying?" bin with NFTs.

The questions getting lost in the middle is "do we need to churn out even more code and trust that it's been reviewed?" and "is using this going to semi-permanently disable most of the knowledge workers?"

If there's even a chance that my executive functions and related mental faculties are degraded by using LLMs then I would rather not. I try it a little and keep a finger on the pulse of the community that are going all-in on it. If it does transform into something that's 99% accurate and with a knob letting me dictate volume of output, I'll put more effort into learning how to hold it. And hopefully by then we'll be able to confirm or refute any of the long-term side effects.

[insane_dreamer]

Agreed. But the OP’s point is that LLM are not being presented as a productivity tool for developers, in the vein of an advanced IDE. They’re being presented as the “solution to everything”.

[satisfice]

Here’s the problem: I don’t believe you. And if I don’t, many others must also not believe your productivity claims.

Why should that matter? Because the more that people automatically associate use of AI in software engineering with professional fraud, the more likely they are to assume that actual good work you are doing is actually fake, as soon as you admit you are using it.

The more grandiose the productivity claims are, the less likely that they could possibly have been tested in a responsible way.

The only thing that could save you is if enough devs clap their hands to keep Tinkerbell alive— a conspiracy of fellows who promise not to ask uncomfortable questions about the fairies who do your job for you.