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by Ianjit 245 days ago
"expect an LLM to correctly produce the complex thing they have in mind"

My guess is that for some types of work people don't know what the complex thing they have in mind is ex ante. The idea forms and is clarified through the process of doing the work. For those types of task there is no efficiency gain in using AI to do the work.
1 comments
danielbln 245 days ago
Why not? Just start iterating in chunks alongside the LLM and change gears/plan/spec as you learn more. You don't have to one-shot everything.
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Ianjit 245 days ago
"Just start iterating in chunks alongside the LLM".

For those types of tasks it probably takes the same amount of time to form the idea without AI as with AI, this is what Metr found in its study of developer productivity.

https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o... https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

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danielbln 245 days ago
That study design has some issues. But let's say it takes me the same amount of time, the agentic flow is still beneficial to me. It provides useful structure, helps with breaking down the problem. I can rubber duck, send off web research tasks, come back to answer questions, etc., all within a single interface. That's useful to me, and especially so if you have to jump around different projects a lot (consultancy). YMMV.
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Ianjit 245 days ago
"That study design has some issues. " This is a study that tries to be scientific, unlike developer self reports and CEO promises of 10x.

Can you point to a better study on the impact of AI on developer productivity? The only other one I can think of finds a 20% uplift in productivity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbDDYKRFjhk

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