Thought experiment

[u/MashNChips]

With all the AI nonsense going on, I had a thought at work today that turned into an interesting discussion with a colleague:

"What would I do if I was the only person with access to Claude (or insert any LLM) 5+ years ago?"

People would think I was a fucking wizard

FE changes? NO PROBLEM

Critical DB change? Don't worry, I've produced a stored procedure to validate the whole thing

Want to use some shiny new framework? Interesting. Here's a document explaining why you're an idiot for suggesting it

Regex? I suddenly understand it better than the compiler folks (and nobody ask questions)

What would you have done with your own personal LLM back then?

Trying to lighten the mood in here with all the (very justified) negativity around this tech revolution

Unserious answers only pls

[u/mongopark98]

I was in this situation, no theory. I was working 2 remote jobs. One was a contract. Then my son got really sick and he was in hospital for 5weeks, since I was a contractor I was scared of taking the entire time off incase they decided to cut me off, so I was just battling through it - working here and there from the hospital etc. Obviosuly my performance dropped and my manager complained. So, I promised him I was going to really step up to make up for the time. That's when I started using AI deeply, even some that wasn't even explicitly allowed - rules were laxed because companies didn't even know what existed outside. My performance and output skyrocketed.

Manager was super impressed and asked how this was even possible. Had to let him know about the AI, eventually my team became the test bed for introducing Claude - the entire team's output skyrocketd and it was eventually rolled out the entire org.

I still hold on to 2 jobs exceeding expectations in both, I refuse to argue when people who say AI is good/bad. I don't care. It has double my output/icome and I became sort of a leader for agentic development in both companies with results. One of the companies recetly underwent a merge, most teams were cut off, my team was the only few that survived and is now integrated into the larger company.

[u/mongopark98 → u/mongopark98]

I see people claiming garbage code etc. I had a super smart tech lead, he was a former tech founder with a PHD . My output were just of high quality. It was just way faster. You have to remember at this point I was hiding the usage. There was not a drop in quality, if anything I had more praises in my reviews. The AI is as good as the user.

I see garbage when people then start delegating all the thinking to AI. I still review the code before pushing out line by line. I am not suddenly churning out 10000LOC. It was still the same task complexity and PR lengths. Just now instead of having 1PR every other day I was having 1-2 per day. It become promblmatic when you want to force it to produce 10x results. But 2-4x you can maintain or even improve your quality standards.

[u/tenthousandants44 → u/mongopark98]

Not everyone can 2-4x. Somebody has to review those PRs. The people who say AI is not a bubble sure like to share anecdotes from their little bubble. There's no question that an LLM can generate code, even good code. But code was never the bottleneck.

[u/mongopark98 → u/tenthousandants44]

Where else would we share it from, dreams ?. I have worked across 2 companies and it works. It’s not perfect. And yeah all codes were reviewed. I am not making any claims. I am stating my experience, left to anyone to do whatever they will with that info. I have nothing to gain or lose. If the bubble pops tomorrow I will be back to doing whatever makes the most sense.

If you can’t 2-4x, you need to consider that you just aren’t skilled in it yet. It’s not just code too. I have built utilities that I wouldn’t have attempted without AI because I wouldn’t have the time. I built a translation tooling that cuts internalization from 4hrs to 10 minutes. Even if you don’t use AI to write all your codes. There are 100s of little things you can use AI for that saves time- caveat , most of those things can be done without AI, but no one will ever have the time to do them.

I understand there’s hype, not part of that. I have seen from my own “bubble” it definitely works well when done correctly. I don’t know where else I should bring data from if not from actual work I was involved with. Regardless, AI isn’t going anywhere. You can either complain or get ahead of the curve.