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jcgrilloHNSource author
Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

Without rigorous, controlled study I'm not ready to accept claims of velocity, efficiency, etc

Without rigorous, controlled study I'm not ready to accept claims of velocity, efficiency, etc. I'm a professional software engineer, I have tried various AI tools in the workplace both for code review and development. I found personally that they were more harmful than effective. But I don't think my personal experience is really important data here. Just like I don't think yours is. What matters is whether these tools actually do something or whether instead they just make some users feel something. The studies I've seen--and there are very few--seem to indicate the effect is more placebo than pharmacological. Regardless, breathless claims that I'm somehow damaging my career by wondering whether these tools actually work are going to do nothing to persuade me. I'm quite secure in my career prospects, thank you kindly. I do admit I don't much like being labeled an "AI skeptic" either. I've been following developments in machine learning for like 2 decades and I'm familiar with results in the field going back to the 1950s. …

Original discussionGoogle boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'730 source comments · at import
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saxenaabhiHN

The proof is in feature velocity of devs/teams that use it and in the layoffs due to efficiency gains. I think it's very hard to convince AI skeptics since for some reason they feel more threatened by it than rest. It's counterproductive and would hinder them professionally but then it's their choice.

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saxenaabhiHN

> You have the opportunity here to convince me, I want to believe there is some merit to this latest AI summer. But I am not seeing the evidence for it. As I said the evidence is in companies not hiring anymore since they don't need as many developers as before. If you want rigorous controlled studies you'll get it in due time. In the meantime maybe just look into the workflows of how people are using re AI skeptics: I started pushing AI in our company early this year, and one of the first questions I got was that "are we doing it to reduce costs". I fully understood and sympathize with the fact many engineers feel threatened and feel they are being replaced. So I clarified it's just to increase our feature velocity which was my honest intention since ofc I'm not a monster. I then asked this engineer to develop a feature using bolt, and he partially managed to do it but in the worst way …

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rockemsockemHN

You say you've used AI tools for code review and deploys, but do you ever just use chat GPT as a faster version of Google for things like understanding a language you aren't familiar with, finding bugs in existing code, or generating boilerplate? Really I only use chat GPT and sometimes Claude code, I haven't used these special-cased AI tools

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