Comment by thinkingemote
2 days ago
I agree I feel more productive. AI tools do actually make it easier and makes my brain use less energy. You would think that would be more productive but maybe it just feels that way.
Stage magicians say that the magic is done in the audiences memory after the trick is done. It's the effect of the activity.
AI coding tools makes developers happier and able to spend more brain power on actually difficult things. But overall perhaps the amount of work isn't in orders of magnitudes it just feels like it.
Waze the navigation app routes you in non standard routes so that you are not stuck in traffic, so it feels fast that you are making progress. But the time taken may be longer and the distance travelled may be further!
Being in stuck traffic and not moving even for a little bit makes you feel that time has stopped, it's boring and frustrating. Now developers need never be stuck. Their roads will be clear, but they may take longer routes.
We get little boosts of dopamine using AI tools to do stuff. Perhaps we used these signals as indicators of productivity "Ahh that days work felt good, I did a lot"
> Waze the navigation app routes you in non standard routes so that you are not stuck in traffic, so it feels fast that you are making progress. But the time taken may be longer and the distance travelled may be further!
You're not "stuck in traffic", you are the traffic. If the app distributes users around and this makes it so they don't end up in traffic jams, it's effectively preventing traffic jams from forming
I liked your washing machine vs. sink example that I see you just edited out. The machine may do it slower and less efficiently than you'd do in the sink, but the machine runs in parallel, freeing you to do something else. So is with good use of LLMs.
Yeah I totally agree. It's like washing by hand vs using a mangle possibly. The metaphor of agents to machines was also what I thought but didn't write as it's about companion tools mainly. (I got confused and put in a high level comment but somehow didn't actually post that!)
For Waze, even if you are traffic and others go around you, you still may get there quicker and your car use less energy than taking the suggested route that feels faster. Others may feel happier and feel like they were faster though. Indeed they were faster but might have taken a longer journey.
Also, generally most people don't use the app around here to effect significant road use changes. But if they did im not sure (but I'm having fun trying to think) what metaphor we can apply to the current topic :)
> on actually difficult things
Can't help but note that in 99% cases this "difficult things" trope makes little sense. In most jobs, the freed time is either spent on other stupid tasks or is lost due to org inefficiencies, or is just procrastinated.
> AI coding tools makes developers happier and able to spend more brain power on actually difficult things
Please don't speak for all developers when you say stuff like this
AI coding tools make me miserable to use