Comment by Uehreka
3 days ago
> My personal theory is that getting a significant productivity boost from LLM assistance and AI tools has a much steeper learning curve than most people expect.
You hit the nail on the head here.
I feel like I’ve seen a lot of people trying to make strong arguments that AI coding assistants aren’t useful. As someone who uses and enjoys AI coding assistants, I don’t find this research angle to be… uh… very grounded in reality?
Like, if you’re using these things, the fact that they are useful is pretty irrefutable. If one thinks there’s some sort of “productivity mirage” going on here, well OK, but to demonstrate that it might be better to start by acknowledging areas where they are useful, and show that your method explains the reality we’re seeing before using that method to show areas where we might be fooling ourselves.
I can maybe buy that AI might not be useful for certain kinds of tasks or contexts. But I keep pushing their boundaries and they keep surprising me with how capable they are, so it feels like it’ll be difficult to prove otherwise in a durable fashion.
I think the thing is there IS a learning curve, AND there is a productivity mirage, AND they are immensely useful, AND it is context dependent. All of this leads to a lot of confusion when communicating with people who are having a different experience.
Right, my problem is that while some people may be correct about the productivity mirage, many of those people are getting out over their skis and making bigger claims than they can reasonably prove. I’m arguing that they should be more nuanced and tactical.
It always comes back to nuance!
Still odd to me that the only vibe coded software that gets aquired are by companies selling tools or want to promote vibe coding.
Pardon my caps, but WHO CARES about acquisitions?!
You’ve been given a dubiously capable genie that can write code without you having to do it! If this thing can build first drafts of those side projects you always think about and never get around to, that in and of itself is useful! If it can do the yak-shaving required to set up those e2e tests you know you should have but never have time for it is useful!
Have it try out all the dumb ideas you have that might be cool but don’t feel worth your time to boilerplate out!
I like to think we’re a bunch of creative people here! Stop thinking about how it can make you money and use it for fun!
I have great code gen tools I've built for myself that build my perfect scaffolding/boilerplate every time, for any project in about 30 seconds.
Took me a week to build those tools. Its much more reliable (and flexible) than any LLM and cost me nothing.
It comes with secure Auth, email, admin, ect ect.. Doesn't cost me a dime and almost never has a common vulnerability.
Best part about it. I know how my side project runs.
Unfortunately, HN is YC-backed, and attracts these types by design.
1 reply →
That's not odd. These things are incredibly useful and vibe coding mostly sucks.
Exactly. The people who say that these assistants are useless or "not good enough" are basically burying their heads in the sand. The people who claim that there is no mirage are burying their head in the sand as well...