That promise is true, though, and the two claims are not opposite. The devil is in details, specifically in what you mean by "people" and "accomplish things".
If by "people" you mean "general public", and by "accomplish things" you mean solving some immediate problems, that may or may not involve authoring a script or even a small app - then yes, this is already happening, and is a big reason behind the AI hype as it is.
If by "people" you mean "experienced software engineers", and by "accomplish things" you mean meaningful contributions to a large software product, measured by high internal code and process quality standards, then no - AI tools may not help with that directly, though chances are greater when you have enough experience with those tools to reliably give them right context and steer away from failure modes.
Still, solving one-off problems != incremental improvements to a large system.
He addressed your point in the paragraph before that. The paragraph from which you quoted was meant to show the difference between your point and the fact that the original research was indeed measuring software engineers.
AI let's people with no experience accomplish things. People who have experience can create those things without AI. Those experienced folks will likely outperform novices, even when novices leverage AI.
None of these statements are controversial. What we have to establish is- Does the experienced AI builder outperform the experienced manual coder?
This runs counter to the starry eyed promises of AI letting people with no experience accomplish things
That promise is true, though, and the two claims are not opposite. The devil is in details, specifically in what you mean by "people" and "accomplish things".
If by "people" you mean "general public", and by "accomplish things" you mean solving some immediate problems, that may or may not involve authoring a script or even a small app - then yes, this is already happening, and is a big reason behind the AI hype as it is.
If by "people" you mean "experienced software engineers", and by "accomplish things" you mean meaningful contributions to a large software product, measured by high internal code and process quality standards, then no - AI tools may not help with that directly, though chances are greater when you have enough experience with those tools to reliably give them right context and steer away from failure modes.
Still, solving one-off problems != incremental improvements to a large system.
> If by "people" you mean "experienced software engineers",
My post is a single sentence and I literally wrote "people with no experience"
He addressed your point in the paragraph before that. The paragraph from which you quoted was meant to show the difference between your point and the fact that the original research was indeed measuring software engineers.
My point is that I was very clear about what people I was referring to.
No need for all the "if by people you mean" rigamarole
Then your previous point is false, because "X helps Y" doesn't run counter to any promise that "X helps Z".
You said the second. You responded to the first.
Y = [experts]
Z = [noobs]
{Y, Z} ⊆ [all humans]
AI let's people with no experience accomplish things. People who have experience can create those things without AI. Those experienced folks will likely outperform novices, even when novices leverage AI.
None of these statements are controversial. What we have to establish is- Does the experienced AI builder outperform the experienced manual coder?