[larodi]

Care to explain which particular intimate knowledge allowed you in the last 6-9 months to be faster than AI in certain area?

Honestly, I'm still faster than AI cooking scrambled eggs, but definitely not faster than neither AI (or compiler) in translating stuff into code.

[jasonfarnon]

I interpret "faster than AI" to include writing the prompt. For me (scientific computing) it is more often than not faster to write out a simulation or design in a language I know inside out like fortran or mathematica than explicate the requirements to an LLM to request the code. Obviously if someone wrote out a prompt to me and the LLM it would be way faster, but I don't think that's what the commenter had in mind.

[Zecc]

If you're good at SQL, or SQL-like languages like Linq, it might be more efficient precisely writing a reasonably complex query than trying to explain it in detail to an AI.

[larodi]

I am very good at SQL, I worked half my life with SQL and teached it and know all kinds of SQL flavour. But good luck getting ahead of AI on a complex query with recursive CTEs, left outers, 625-column tables that change semantics conditional to certain prop, and then some obscure Oracle package APIs.

No way U beat an LLM on this, even on trivial ones. LLMs are better at that since at least 2024, if you haven't noticed, then you're not doing enough SQL perhaps.

But, of course it took years for people to realize they cannot outpace Visual Studio in the 90s by being very good at x86 assembly.

[tdeck]

Not the parent but I've had this happen when debugging for sure. Sometimes I ask Claude Code to help me debug something and it makes a wrong assumption and just churns in circles burning tokens. While it's doing that I realize the problem and fix it.

[murkt]

Sometimes debuggind is faster indeed, and making small very focused changes too.

But during feature development? Not possible. And I consider myself a very fast developer

[tdeck]

Don't you find that debugging takes place as part of feature development though?

[murkt]

What I meant is that only sometimes I am faster than Claude with debugging. When it's a standalone problem, a report in Sentry, and I just know immediately where I need to go to fix it. Then it's faster to do myself, than telling Claude what's the problem and where to look and wait.

Bugs happen during feature development, as you say, but then Claude is in the context, and I don't need to tell it where to go, it sees the bug with failing tests, or smth similar.

BTW. One thing that helps my Claude with debugging harder problems is that I tell it to apply scientific method to debugging. Generate hypotheses, gather pros/cons evidence, write to a journal file debug-<problem>.md, design minimal experiments to debunk hypotheses.

You can add that as a skill, and sometimes it will pick it up automatically, but it works wonders just as a single sentence in the input.

[larodi]

..but then you ignore all other times CC got it right, and statistically I would put my bets CC does it right (or Codex (or PI)) than you would, and more often is right than tis not.

besides it is a system that you query, it responds. I'm sure your dbs are not always 'right' and particularly when you as the wrong questions.