But there is also evidence that AI is actually getting things done, right?

Most of the evidence that AI can't get things done that I've seen tends to be along the lines of asking it to do a large job and it struggling. It seems like a lot of people stop there, and either don't investigate problems where it might be a better fit.

The AI sceptics do think deeply about where AI might be a better fit. They indeed thought deeply about this, but for every hypthetical use case they could come up with, they had to conclude that

- AI has to become much much more reliable to be suitable for this use case

- the current AI architectures (as "the thing that bigtech markets") will likely by principle never be able to achieve this kind of reliability

This is exactly why these AI-sceptical people got so sceptical about AI, and also the reason why these AI sceptics got so vocal about their opinions.

So i think i have, in fact, tried my best to use it.

It's great for little tiny things. Give me a one-off script to transform some command's output, translate some code from Python to Typescript, write individual unit tests for individual functions. But none of that is transforming how i do my job, it's saving me minutes, not hours.

Nobody at my company is getting serious quantities of programming done with AI, either, and not for lack of trying. I've never been one to claim it's useless, just that it's usefulness (i.e. "how much is getting done") is drastically overblown.

I have cases where it saves hours for sure, but they are fewer and further between. Last week we used it to solve 600+ linting warnings in 25 year old code, which probably saved me the better part of a day. It did a fantastic job of converting %-format strings to f-strings. I created a skill telling it how to test a %-to-f conversion in isolation, and it was able to use that skill to flawlessly convert all of our strings to modern usage.

I'm getting a lot more done than I could have without AI by using this approach with the agent.

Is there? I haven't seen a single AI success story that rang true, that wasn't coming from someone with a massive financial interest in it being successful. A few people subjectively think AI is making them more productive, but there's no real objective validation of that; they're not producing super-impressive products, and there was that recent study that had senior developers thinking they were being more productive using AI when in fact it was the opposite.

I believe you are talking about the study: Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity. It is an interesting data point, but it's far from conclusive. It studied 16 developers working on large (1MLOC+) codebases, and the AI tooling struggles with large codebases (new tools like Brokk are attempting to improve performance there). The authors acknowledge that participants dropped hard AI-disallowed issues "reducing the average AI-disallowed difficulty". Some of the selected developers seem to have been inexperienced at AI use.

Smaller tools and codebases and unfamiliar code are sweet spots for the AI tools. When I need a tool to help me do my job, the AIs can take a couple sentence description and turn it into working code, often on the first go. Monitoring plugins, automation tools, programs in the few thousand lines of code, writing tests, these are all things the AIs are REALLY good at. Also: asking questions about the code.

A few examples: Last night I had Claude Code implement a change to the helix editor so that if you go back into a file you previously edited, it takes you back to the spot you were at in your last editing session. I don't know the helix code nor Rust at all. Claude was able to implement this in the background while I was working on another task and then watching TV in the evening. A few weeks ago I used Claude Code to fix 600+ linting errors in 20 year old code, in an evening while watching TV, these easily would have taken a day to do manually. A few months ago Claude built me a "rsync but for block devices" program; I did this one as a comparison of writing it manually vs vibe coding it with Claude, and Claude had significant advantages.

But, I'm guessing these will fall into the "does not ring true" category, probably also "no real objective validation". But to me, personally, there is absolutely evidence that AI is actually getting things done.

No, subjective experience is not reliable and is the whole reason humanity invented the scientific method to have a more reliable method of ascertaining truth.

I think it's interesting that you jump to that. I consider a study, even a small one, to be better evidence than subjective anecdotes; isn't that the normal position that one should take on any issue? I'm not taking that study as gospel, but I think it's grounds to be even more skeptical of anecdotal evaluations than normal.

> Some of the selected developers seem to have been inexperienced at AI use.

This seems to be a constant no-true-Scotsman argument from AI advocates. AI didn't work in a given setting? Clearly the people trying it were inexperienced, or the AI they were testing was an old one that doesn't reflect the current state of the art, or they didn't use this advocate's super-awesome prompt that solves all the problems. I never hear these objections before someone tries to evaluate AI, only after they've done it and got a bad result.

> But, I'm guessing these will fall into the "does not ring true" category, probably also "no real objective validation".

Well, yes. Duh. When the best available evidence shows little objective effectiveness from AI, and suggests that people who use AI are biased to think it's more effective than it was, I'm going to go with that, unless and until better evidence comes along.

Well you're in luck, a ton of better evidence across much larger empirical studies has been available for a while now! Somehow they just didn't get the same amount of airtime around here. You can find a few studies linked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45379452

But if you want to verify that's a representative sample, do a simple Google Scholar search and just read the abstracts of any random sample of the results.

We're coming at it from very different places is the thing. The GenAI tooling is allowing me to do things that I otherwise wouldn't have time to do, which objectively to me is a clear win. So, I'm going to look at a study like that and pick it apart, because it doesn't match my objective observations. You are coming from a different angle.

What do you think the word "objectively" means?

"With a basis in observable facts". I am observing that I am getting things done with GenAI that I wouldn't be able to otherwise, due to lack of time.

While you were typing your message above, Claude was modifying a 100KLOC software project in a language I'm unfamiliar with to add a feature that'll make the software have one less rough edge for me. At the same time, I was doing a release of our software for work.

Feels pretty objective from my perspective. Yes, I realize from your perspective it is subjective.

The few serious studies attempting to measure out if (vs asking people “do you think this helped you”; again, that’s not useful evidence of anything), seem to have come come out anywhere from “a wash” to “mildly detrimental”.

Did mass processed food production stop people from cooking or enjoying human made food? No it did not. The same is true in almost all domains where a form of industrialization happens.

Yeah but what if I'm getting pitted against my coworkers who are vibe coding and getting things done faster than I am. Some people write code with pride because it's their brainchild. AI completely ruins the fun for those people when they have to compete against their coworkers for productivity.

I'm not in disagreement with you or the GP comment, but this it is super hard to make nuanced comments about GenAI.

Just the existence of quick to eat and prepare foods are going to put limits on how long you are going to be given for lunch and dinner. Even if you wanted to prepare fresh food, the system is going to make it difficult since it becomes an unsupported activity in terms of time allowances and market access.

To be clear when i say processed i dont mean tv dinners but that have prepared food that human didnt cook.

The fact that i think people need to get over is that you are blessed beyond measure to have a fun job that gives you creative joy and satisfaction. Losing that because of ai/new tool is not some unprecedented event signaling the end of creativity. A job is a job.

What amuses me is i have just as much fun clacking away with some ai help as i did before. But then again i like the problem solving process more than writing the same code in one specific programming language.

It saved countless people from starvation while introducing the disease of obesity on a massive scale. I suppose that's a reasonable tradeoff.

> Every fast food meal you eat was prepared by someone having a miserable time.

If you want more data, then maybe ask the one making the claim for his data instead and subtract it from 100%?

You might indeed be shocked to find that not everyone consumes fast food.

I am hoping the latter. Being foolish is far more temporary a condition than being cruel.

Also, the core point is about people being able to find meaning in their work. That you've decided to laser in on this specific point to go on a tangent of whattaboutism is largely irrelevant.

Have a nice day.

a) just because some people are miserable at work, doesn't mean we shouldn't care that other people might become miserable at work

b) Someone saying they prefer their food to be made without suffering is clearly a hypocrite in all cases because... there are miserable people in fast food jobs?

I mean... really. Come on now.

Cry me a river for software developers (been delivering code professionally for 30 years and before that as a hobbyist) because now we have something that makes us more efficient.

So much infrastructure is built by people having a less than good time.

An Engineer might get the jollies designing a bridge, but the workers who work on it dont.

The goal is to give lots of people happiness from not having to drive 100km out of their way.

If we solve a lot of problems for a lot of people and all it costs is the happiness of a few software engineers, well I am not convinced they were happy to begin with. Fund it.

My father was a laborer and he was incredibly proud of every project he worked on to build the city he loved.

He was exceptionally proud the day I drove to my first day of work at Microsoft, along a road be helped pave.

We should all aim to build things we can take pride in.

What is this viewpoint based on?

The majority of blue collar workers I know get plenty of pleasure from their work and would absolutely hate sitting on a computer 8 hours per day.

If the "work only as means to an end" line of thinking continues, us programmers will be there in no time.

I think work becoming more abstract and not seeing anything concrete like a bridge or a road or a building after the work is complete is the source of a lot of mental illness, melancholy, and even suicidal ideation in modern society.

Where do we draw the line where we have to delete our own grouchiness from the Internet for fear of letting others consume something we created in anger?

The line though, is probably when you put my harm out into the world than good. That's probably a good place to draw it.

I'm sadly unsurprised, but me ranting about silicon valley mentality on HN feels like yelling at a cloud. Best we can do is keep trying to make people's lives better even if it is not in the best interest of the shareholders :)

Funnily enough, the OG silicon valley vibe includes "let's make this world a better place to live", the hippie stuff imho. Nowadays it's more like "let's maximize shareholder value and extract what we can" and that's lazy. Bring back the old school SV and take more acid!

> If I am eating a delicious meal but the people preparing it had a miserable time, or it was prepared entirely by robots controlled by nefarious people using the profits to harm society, I don’t want it.

So every restaurant you go to, you head to the back to run a purity test on the political beliefs and “happiness” of the people making your food to make sure they line up exactly with what you believe?

This just screams luxury beliefs to me, and historically, Utopianism like this has been the actual dangerous slippery slope. Like…tens of millions of people starving dangerous.

I just don’t think this fully automated luxury communism thing you are fantasizing about will make you happy. Seeking pleasure 24/7 is pathological and means you stop feeling it, and doing things for the benefit of others instead of yourself is miserable…but ultimately more fulfilling.

Does their argument gets invalidated if they don't verify *every* restaurant ever? Nobody has the time nor the resources to follow their moral standards with 100% precision, but if we're doing our best I'd argue we can still take that moral stance.

Recently a slave labour scheme was dismantled in my country in which some wineries were keeping slaves to produce grape juice. The companies were on the news, and although I do love some grape juice I will never ever buy from them again. Do I check *every* single source of the products I consume? Of course no. Can they eventually do some marketing tricks and fool me into buying from them again? Maybe. But I do my best and I feel like this is sufficient to claim this is a good moral stance nonetheless.

Unfortunately I feel compelled to express the doomer take here, but I don't think most people care how their fast fashion or iPhones are made. And very few find it practically doable to boycott a company like Nestle. People trying to go full Stallman (sans the problematic stuff, rather along the lines of FSF) also find it just difficult.

Most people are just happy that the boot is on the other foot or someone else's back and that they have enough convenience and isolation from the rest of the world not to care. Or honestly it's hard to get by for them as well and all of those trinkets and unethically made products help them get through the day.

> Human society and civilization is for the benefit of humans, not for filling checkboxes above all else.

I really wish that was the case, instead of for the extraction of what little wealth we have by corpos and the oligarchs (call them whatever you want), to push us more towards a rat race of sorts where we get by just barely enough to keep consuming but not enough to effect meaningful change most of the time. Then again, could be better, could be worse - it's cool to see passionate people choosing to make something just for the sake of the experience and creating something unique, not always with a profit in mind.

In regards to software development in particular, I'm reminded of a few specific paragraphs in https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

  Every programmer occasionally, when nobody’s home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. It’s a different file for every programmer. Sometimes they wrote it, sometimes they found it and knew they had to save it. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty, then the tears turn bitter as they remember the rest of the files and the inevitable collapse of all that is good and true in the world.
  
  This file is Good Code. It has sensible and consistent names for functions and variables. It’s concise. It doesn’t do anything obviously stupid. It has never had to live in the wild, or answer to a sales team. It does exactly one, mundane, specific thing, and it does it well. It was written by a single person, and never touched by another. It reads like poetry written by someone over thirty.
  
  Every programmer starts out writing some perfect little snowflake like this. Then they’re told on Friday they need to have six hundred snowflakes written by Tuesday, so they cheat a bit here and there and maybe copy a few snowflakes and try to stick them together or they have to ask a coworker to work on one who melts it and then all the programmers’ snowflakes get dumped together in some inscrutable shape and somebody leans a Picasso on it because nobody wants to see the cat urine soaking into all your broken snowflakes melting in the light of day. Next week, everybody shovels more snow on it to keep the Picasso from falling over.

What if the people, miserable or not, getting paid to make the meal have a fundamentally opposed world view to you and will use some amount of their wealth to try and enforce it on you in roundabout ways.

Because I assure you, some guy in a warehouse in Des Moines filling out some bullshit web form just so he can swipe his employee key card and start his forklift, doesn't want to enrich you, or me, or just about anyone else on HN. And his boss who felt compelled to buy the crap just to save a buck on insurance probably feels about the same.

Vegetarian I presume?