vs.
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In a randomised controlled trial – the first of its kind – experienced computer programmers could use AI tools to help them write code.
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Your quote is very representative of the magical wishful thinking most people have about AI: https://dmitriid.com/everything-around-llms-is-still-magical...
Your comment here is very representative of how quickly people who are AI skeptics will jump on anything that supports their skepticism.
we don't demand every developer pop Adderall though
Me: The person above literally pitches an unsupported belief against a study
You: it's pretty easy to believe your own experience over even a well-constructed "randomised controlled trial".
Really? Really?!!
As for "boosting your productivity", it's also what I'm talking about in the article I linked:
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For every description of how LLMs work or don't work we know only some, but not all of the following:
- Do we know which projects people work on? No
- Do we know which codebases (greenfield, mature, proprietary etc.) people work on? No
- Do we know the level of expertise the people have? No. Is the expertise in the same domain, codebase, language that they apply LLMs to? We don't know.
- How much additional work did they have reviewing, fixing, deploying, finishing etc.? We don't know.
Even if you have one person describing all of the above, you will not be able to compare their experience to anyone else's because you have no idea what others answer for any of those bullet points.
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So what happens when we actually control and measure those variables?
Wait, don't answer: "no, it's easier to believe yourself over a study".
See? Skeptics don't even have to "jump on anything that supports their skepticism." Even you supply them with material.
I've been banging this drum for over a year now: LLMs are deceptively difficult and uninituitive to use. Just one example: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/
What I'm willing to assert as fact, based not just on my own experiences (though they're a major role) but on observing this space for several years and talking to literally hundreds of people, is that LLMs can provide you a very real productivity boost in coding if you take the time to learn how to use them - or if you get lucky and chance upon the most productive patterns.
EDIT: I just saw you're the author of https://dmitriid.com/#everything-around-llms-is-still-magica... - that was a great piece! I think I may actually agree with you. I misinterpreted "magical thinking" as referring to something else.
Thank you!
> I think I may actually agree with you.
I was just going to write "see, you actually agree with me", but got hit by the reply rate limit :)
And I agree with >90% of what you write, so I was surprised that this bout took us to weird places.
Im sure they were completely genuine in how they felt, just as i am sure you are too.
In my youth, I would have argued this was bad. Now, I tend to agree. Not that studies are worthless; but they are just part of the accumulation of evidence, and when they contradict a clear result you are directly seeing, you need to weight the evidence appropriately.
(Obviously, replicated studies showing clear effects should be more heavily weighted.)
Everything is just shifting odds.
Either way, it's hard to interlocute if your misreading is an absolute conclusion that cannot be argued, then transmutated warranted skepticism.
Edit: SimonW? Really? I didn’t see the name but I didn’t expect you to be like that.
- Snark?
- Is "the issue" that anyone who claims any productivity gain is using magical thinking?
- How does the linked article "deal with" "the issue"?
- What title did they mention?
- What did they link to that has that title?
> Edit: SimonW? Really? I didn’t see the name but I didn’t expect you to be like that.
Like what? I think you're getting a bit emotional & personal here, I don't read anything remotely inappropriate into Simon's comment. Been here 15 years. OP's was odd for HN in that it admits 0 argument: if you think you have productivity gains, it's magical thinking.
My comment was in response to Simon’s reply to a user who posted an article. The title of the article they posted addresses magical thinking in AI.
Now whether that’s an opinion you share or not is not the point. Simon responded as if the user was only calling any perceived gains from AI as magical thinking which is not the case.
I’ll let you come back to that when you feel like it. Altogether, though it’s just disappointing to see someone who’s work I read often jumping to an emotional response when it’s not warranted.
I don't think the response from troupo that nayshins's personal experience is invalidated by a "randomised controlled trial" was well argued, so I imitated what I saw as their snarky wording with my own reworded version of it.
I do take the "AI isn't actually a productivity boost" thing a little bit personally these days, because the logical conclusion for that is that I've been deluding myself for the past two years and I'm effectively a victim of "magical thinking".
(That said, I did actually go to delete my comment shortly after posting it because I didn't think it added anything to the conversation, but it had already drawn a reply so I left it there.)
Working in security I often feel the same way and let’s be fair in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big of a deal.
You may just as well have. I, for one, am absolutely ready to re-evaluate any and all approaches I have with AI to see if I am actually more productive or not.
But moreover, your own singular experience with your own code and projects may make you more productive. We don't know if it does because we don't have a baseline against which to measure.
But even moreover over that moreover is that we don't even have a question "does a single senior engineer's experience with his own code and approaches can be generalised over the entire population of programmers?" Skeptics say: no (and now have some proof of that). Optimists loudly say: yes, of course, and dismiss everyone who dares contradict out of hand.
Gosh, I was conflicted, then you pulled out that sentence and I was convinced. :)
Alternatively: When faced with a contradiction, first, check your premises.
I don't want to belabor the point too much, there's little common ground if we're at all or nothing thinking - "the study proved AI is net-negative because of this pull quote" isn't discussion.
the psychological effect reminds me a bit of slot machines, which provide you with enough intermittent wins to make you feel like you're winning while youre lose.
I think this might be linked to that study that found experienced oss devs who thought they were faster when they were in actual fact 20% slower.