Comment by m00x

3 months ago

Agentic coding is absolutely not a failure. It's just not the 10x that CEOs really wanted it to be.

We learned that some tasks don't really benefit from AI while others do. My team went from 7 people to 2 (went to new teams, no layoffs), and we're doing the same amount if not more work than we used to.

Is it more draining and lacking of focused work? Yes. Is it more money for the business? Yes.

Friend, you are commenting on a thread where one of the most prominent figures in tech (rightly or wrongly) is saying something did not meet expectations. As far as we can tell this is a man with every incentive to exaggerate and boost these products.

In my world, when something is expensive and doesn’t meet expectations it called a failure. Especially when something has been as hyped, scrutinized, defended and attacked as vibe coding.

Honestly, if you are the director of robotics at a firm I think it’s time you took a cold shower.

  • Why are you assuming Zuck's expectations for progress of _his_ product have anything to do with the impact of that category of product for its users?

  • On the other side of this you have two companies growing revenue literally the fastest ever in any market segment, just for said tech. Somebody is spending this money and thinks it's worth it. Let's check back in six months.

> Agentic coding is absolutely not a failure. It's just not the 10x that CEOs really wanted it to be.

It’s absolutely 10x faster for coding. But coding is only 10% of my job. The other 90% is figuring out what to code.

  • From my experience with daily stand-ups, I think they can be a significant boost to that, too. Though you will absolutely have to wear a manager hat with their estimates and breakdowns, not just fire-and-forget, as they're often as not wildly over-optimistic about task complexity.

Being a "failure" means it fails to meet its success criteria.

If you claim 10x and deliver 3x, that is a failure. The 3x may still be impressive or a gamechanger or ..., but it still falls short of its promises.

I am also leading a small team of myself and 2 others and we're getting a lot done. The short lines of communication of being a small group + the power of agents has been great for us.

> Is it more draining and lacking of focused work?

To be completely honest, I’m living life right now. I love programming with my bare hands, but man I’m living just building a gajillion things a mile a minute with LLMs. I then come home and spend hours building stuff for myself using local models. I’ve never been so excited about just building shit, that I sometimes want to pull all nighters because I’ve been in the zone (a for work and at home).

Draining? Sorry… inject that LLM serum right into my veins

> while others do

Now we just need to find those tasks. I want to believe.

> and we're doing the same amount if not more work than we used to

Zero evidence for this. It's programmers self-reporting their own productivity. (Have we not learned this lesson after 50 years of programming practice?)