[coltonv]

> Wait, now you're saying I set the 10x bar? No, I did not.

I distinctly did not say that. I said your article was one of the ones that made me feel anxious. And it's one of the ones that spurred me to write this article. I demonstrated how your language implies a massive productivity boost from AI. Does it not? Is this not the entire point of what you wrote? That engineers who aren't using AI are crazy (literally the title) because they are missing out on all this "rocket fuel" productivity? The difference between rocket fuel and standing still has to be a pretty big improvement.

The points I make here still apply, there is not some secret well of super-productivity sitting out in the open that luddites are just too grumpy to pick up and use. Those who feel they have gotten massive productivity boosts are being tricked by occasional, rare boosts in productivity.

You said you solved hallucinations, could you share some of how you did that?

[tptacek]

I asked for an example of one of the articles you'd read that said that LLMs were turning ordinary developers into 10x developers. You cited my article. My article says nothing of the sort; I find the notion of "10x developers" repellant.

[coltonv]

If you really need some, there are some links in another comment. Another one that was made me really wonder if I was missing the bus and makes 10x claims repeatedly is this YC podcast episode[1]. But again, I'm not trying to write a point by point counter of a specific article or video but a general narrative. If you want that for your article, Ludicity does a better job eviscerating your post than I ever could: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/contra-ptaceks-terrible-arti...

I'm trying to write a piece to comfort those that feel anxious about the wave of articles telling them they aren't good enough, that they are "standing still", as you say in your article. That they are crazy. Your article may not say the word 10x, but it makes something extremely clear: you believe some developers are sitting still and others are sipping rocket fuel. You believe AI skeptics are crazy. Thus, your article is extremely natural to cite when talking about the origin of this post.

You can keep being mad at me for not providing a detailed target list, I said several times that that's not what the point of this is. You can keep refusing to actually elaborate on how you use AI day to day and solve its problems. That's fine. I don't care. I care a lot more to talk about the people who are actually engaging with me (such as your friend) and helping me to understand what they are doing. Right now, if you're going to keep not actually contributing to the conversation, you're just kinda being a salty guy with an almost unfathomable 408,000 karma going through every HN thread every single day and making hot takes.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IACHfKmZMr8

[Quarrelsome]

how much faster does an engine on rocket fuel go, than one not on rocket fuel?

The article in question[0] has the literal tag line:

> My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts

how much saner is someone who isn't nuts to someone who is nuts? 10x saner? What do the specific numbers matter given you're not writing a paper?

You're enjoying the click bait benefits of using strong language and then acting offended when someone calls you out on it. Yes, maybe you didn't literally say "10x" but you said or quoted things in exactly that same ballpark and its worthy of a counter point like the OP has provided. They're both interesting articles with strong opinions that make the world a more interesting place so idk why you're trying to disown the strength with which you wrote your article.

[0] : https://fly.io/blog/youre-all-nuts/

[tptacek]

I'm not complaining about "strong language", I'm saying: my post didn't say anything about "10x developers", and was just cited to me as the source of this post's claims about 10x'ing.

I'm not offended at all. I'm saying: no, I'm not a valid cite for that idea. If the author wants to come back and say "10x developer", a term they used twenty five times in this piece, was just a rhetorical flourish, something they conjured up themselves in their head, that's great! That would resolve this small dispute neatly. Unfortunately: you can't speak for them.

[Quarrelsome]

10x is a meme in our industry that relates to developer productivity and I think it well reflects the sort of productivity gain that someone would be "nuts" to be skeptical about. You might not have specifically said "10x" but I imagine many people left your article believing that agentic AI is the "next 10x" productivity boost.

They used it 25 times in their piece and in your piece stated that being interested in "the craft" is something people should do in their own time from now on. Strongly implying, if not outright stating; that the processes and practices we've refined for the past 70 years of software engineering need to move aside for the next hotness that has only been out for 6 months. Sure you never said "10x", but to me it read entirely like you're doing the "10x" dance. It was a good article and it definitely has inspired me to check it out.

[tptacek]

No. There's all sorts of software engineering craft that usually has no place on the job site; for instance, there's a huge amount of craft in learning pure-functional languages like Haskell, but nobody freaks out when their teams decide people can't randomly write Haskell code instead of the Python and Rust everyone else is writing. You're extrapolating because you're trying to defend your point, but the point you're trying to make is that I meant to communicate something in my own article that I not only never said, but also find repellant.

[Quarrelsome]

Sure, I'm extrapolating what I read as strong language in your article as being a direct attack on making the code precise and flexible over good enough to ship (mediocre code, first-pass, etc). I imagine this might continue to be a battleground as adoption increases, especially at orgs with less engineering culture, in order to drive down costs and increase agentic throughput.

However there is a bit of irony in that you're happy to point out my defensiveness as a potential flaw when you're getting hung up on nailing down the "10x" claim with precision. As an enjoyer of both articles I think this one is a fair retort to yours, so I think it a little disappointing to get distracted by the specifics.

If only we could accurately measure 1x developer productivity, I imagine the truth might be a lot clearer.