How do you reconcile these observations (particularly 3 and 4) with the responses to Thane Ruthenis’s question about developer productivity gains?
It was posted in early March, so after all major recent releases besides o3 (edit: and Gemini 2.5 Pro). Although Thane mentions hearing nebulous reports of large gains (2-10x) in the post itself, most people in the comments report much smaller ones, or cast doubt on the idea that anyone is getting meaningful large gains at all. Is everyone on LW using these models wrong? What do your informants know that these commenters don’t?
Also, how much direct experience do you have using the latest reasoning models for coding assistance?
(IME they are good, but not that good; to my ears, “I became >2x faster” or “this is better than my best devs” sound like either accidental self-owns, or reports from a parallel universe.)
If you’ve used them but not gotten these huge boosts, how do you reconcile that with your points 3 and 4? If you’ve used them and have gotten huge boosts, what was that like (it would clarify these discussions greatly to get more direct reports about this experience)?
How do you reconcile these observations (particularly 3 and 4) with the responses to Thane Ruthenis’s question about developer productivity gains?
It was posted in early March, so after all major recent releases besides o3 (edit: and Gemini 2.5 Pro). Although Thane mentions hearing nebulous reports of large gains (2-10x) in the post itself, most people in the comments report much smaller ones, or cast doubt on the idea that anyone is getting meaningful large gains at all. Is everyone on LW using these models wrong? What do your informants know that these commenters don’t?
Also, how much direct experience do you have using the latest reasoning models for coding assistance?
(IME they are good, but not that good; to my ears, “I became >2x faster” or “this is better than my best devs” sound like either accidental self-owns, or reports from a parallel universe.)
If you’ve used them but not gotten these huge boosts, how do you reconcile that with your points 3 and 4? If you’ve used them and have gotten huge boosts, what was that like (it would clarify these discussions greatly to get more direct reports about this experience)?