[simonw]

I'm not disputing that different people have radically different experiences of how much productivity boost they can get out of working with LLMs.

I've been banging this drum for over a year now: LLMs are deceptively difficult and uninituitive to use. Just one example: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/

What I'm willing to assert as fact, based not just on my own experiences (though they're a major role) but on observing this space for several years and talking to literally hundreds of people, is that LLMs can provide you a very real productivity boost in coding if you take the time to learn how to use them - or if you get lucky and chance upon the most productive patterns.

EDIT: I just saw you're the author of https://dmitriid.com/#everything-around-llms-is-still-magica... - that was a great piece! I think I may actually agree with you. I misinterpreted "magical thinking" as referring to something else.

[troupo]

> that was a great piece!

Thank you!

> I think I may actually agree with you.

I was just going to write "see, you actually agree with me", but got hit by the reply rate limit :)

And I agree with >90% of what you write, so I was surprised that this bout took us to weird places.