The "you only think you're more productive" argument is tiresome. Yes, I know for sure that I'm more productive. There's nothing uncertain about it. Does it lead to other problems? No doubt, but claiming my productivity gains are imaginary is not serious.
I've seen a lot of people who previously touted that it doesn't work at all use that study as a way to move the goalpost and pretend they've been right all along.
I would be interested to know how you measure your productivity gains though, in an objective way where you're not the victim of bias.
I just recently had to rate whether I felt like I got more done by leaning more on Claude Code for a week to do a toy project and while I _feel_ like I was more productive, I was already biased to think so, and so I was a lot more careful with my answer, especially as I had to spend a considerable amount of time either reworking the generated code or throwing away several hours of work because it simply made things up.
It sounds like you're very productive without AI or that your perceived gains are pretty small. To me, it's such a stark contrast that asking how I measure it is like asking me to objectively verify that a car is faster than walking.
“I'm eating fewer calories yet keep putting on weight.”
There's a reason self-reported measures are questioned: they have been wildly off in different domains. Objectively verifying that a car is faster than walking is easy. When it's not easy to objectively prove something, then there are a lot that could go wrong, including the disagreements on the definition of what's being measured.
You're talking about cases where the measured productivity gains were marginal. Claiming my individual productivity gains are imaginary is simply absurd. I know I am more productive and it's a fact.
Again, people who were already highly productive without AI won't understand how profound the increase is.
Well said, people keep acting like one study that has issues can be quoted at me and it somehow erases the fact that I’ve seen simply undeniable productivity gains, drives me mad. I get the feeling no measurement system would satiate them anyway as their intent is to undermine you because emotionally they’re not ready to accept the usefulness of LLMs.
If I showed them time gains, they’d just say “well you don’t know how much tech debt you’re creating”, they’d find a weasel way to ignore any methodology we used.
If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be conveniently ignoring all but that one study that is skeptical of productivity gains.
I built a financial trading app in a couple of month, it would have taken 2 - 3 years without AI, at least. Maybe I would have never finsihed because I would have given up some time because of too much effort etc.
So - this thing would never be in existance and work without a 20 USD ClaudeAI subscription :)
OK, so it sounds like this is a 'I know for certain I can't code without AI and that I get nothing coherent done, and now I'm doing the greatest things all the time, so you're demonstrably wrong!' argument.
I would ask, then, if you're qualified to evaluate that what 'you' are doing now is what you think it is? Writing off 'does it lead to other problems' with 'no doubt, but' feels like something to watch closely.
I imagine a would-be novelist who can't write a line. They've got some general notions they want to be brilliant at, but they're nowhere. Apply AI, and now there's ten million words, a series, after their continual prompts. Are they a novelist, or have they wasted a lot of time and energy cosplaying a novelist? Is their work a communication, or is it more like an inbox full of spam into which they're reading great significance because they want to believe?
To be honest, if that person spent time coming up with world building, plot ideas etc all themselves, got the ai to draft stuff and edited it continuously until they got the exact result they wanted in the form of a novel, then yeah I would say they’re a novelist.
You can currently go to websites and use character generators and plot idea generators to get unstuck from writers block or provide inspiration and professional writers already do this _all the time_.
I've seen a lot of people who previously touted that it doesn't work at all use that study as a way to move the goalpost and pretend they've been right all along.