> The inability of developers to tell if a tool sped them up or slowed them down is fascinating in itself, probably applies to many other forms of human endeavour, and explains things as varied as why so many people think that AI has made them 10 times more productive, why I continue to use Vim, why people drive in London etc.
In boating, there's a notion of a "set and drift" which describes how wind and current pushes a boat off course. If a mariner isn't careful, they'll end up far from their destination because of it.
This is because when you're sitting in a boat, your perception of motion is relative and local. You feel the breeze on your face, and you see how the boat cuts through the surrounding water. You interpret that as motion towards your destination, but it can equally consist of wind and current where the medium itself is moving.
I think a similar effect explains all of these. Our perception of "making progress" is mostly a sense of motion and "stuff happening" in our immediate vicinity. It's not based on a perception of the goal getting closer, which is much harder to measure and develop an intuition for.
So people tend to choose strategies that make them feel like they're making progress even if it's not the most effective strategy. I think this is why people often take "shortcuts" when driving that are actually longer. All of the twists and turns keep them busy and make them feel like they're making more progress than zoning out on a boring interstate does.
Something I noticed early on when using AI tools was that it was great because I didn't get blocked. Somehow, I always wanted to keep going and always felt like I could keep going.
The problem, of course, is that one might thoughtlessly invoke the ai tool when it would be faster to make the one line change directly
Edit
This could make sense with the driving analogy. If the road I was planning to take is closed, gps will happily tell me to try something else. But if that fails too, it might go back to the original suggestion.
Exactly! Waze the navigation app tends to route users on longer routes but which feels more fast. When driving we perceive our journey as fast or slow not by the actual length but by our memories of what happened. Waze knows human drivers are happier with driving a route that may be longer in time and distance of they feel like they are making progress with the twists and turns.
Ai tools makes programming feel easier. That it might be actually less productive is interesting but we humans prefer the easier shortcuts. Our memories of coding with AI tells us that we didn't struggle and therefore we made progress.
That sounds like a navigation tool that I absolutely do not want! Occasionally I do enjoy meandering around, but usually fastest / shortest path would be preferred.
And I'm not sure about the other either. In my 20+ year career in aerospace software, the most memorable times were solving interesting problems, not days with no struggle just churning out code.
Indeed it is removing the memorable events of achievement!
Generally memorable things are different than unmemorable things. Work is unmemorable. Driving is unmemorable except when something negative happens. Waze tries to give some positive feelings to the driving route. Waze knows that people want positive experiences sometimes more than efficiency.
Being stuck in a traffic jam is more memorable than not being so. Or we remember the negative feeling more than the fact that our drive actually wasn't inefficient.
AI tools makes us have a less negative day of work. so we feel like we have no traffic jams. "I got so much done" really means "I didn't get stuck". But it's also removing the positive feelings too!
It's an illusion of progress through our feelings and memories.
Or programming with AI brings different feedback mechanisms and systems and different emotional engagements and different memory behaviours. It's very interesting!
We all as humans are hardwired to prefer greedy algorithms, basically.
I also think that AI written code- is just not read. People hate code-reviews, and actively refuse to read code- because that is hard work, reading into other peoples thoughts and ideas.
This is why pushing for new code, rewrites, new frameworks is so popular. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
So a ton of ai-generated code- is just that, never read. Its generated, tested against test-functions - and thats it. I wouldn't wonder, if some of these devs themselves have only marginal ideas whats in there codebases and why.
I have mostly worked in aerospace software, and find this rather horrifying. I suppose, if your tests are in fact good and comprehensive enough, there could be a logical argument for not needing to understand the code, but if we're talking people's safety in the hands of your software, I don't know if there is any number of tests I would accept in exchange for willingly giving up understanding of the code.
You're transferring the need to be really good at coding and understanding code to the need to be really good at testing and understanding tests, which 9/10 times requires being good at coding and understanding code. There are no free lunches.
> The inability of developers to tell if a tool sped them up or slowed them down is fascinating in itself
Linux/UNIX users are convinced of the superiority of keyboard control and CLI tools, but studies have shown that the mouse is faster for almost all common tasks.
Keyboard input feels faster because there are more actions per second.
>but studies have shown that the mouse is faster for almost all common tasks.
Do you think that daily CLI Linux/UNIX users might have a different list of what they consider "common tasks"?
I dont think they have different list.
Replying email, copy/moving files, writting document, etc