Capable, yeah, but not reliable, that's my point. They can one shot fantastic code, or they can one shot the code I then have to review and pull my hair out over for a week, because it's such crap (and the person who pushed it is my boss, for example, so I can't just tell him to try again).
That's not consistent.
You can ask your boss to submit PRs using Codex’s “try 5 variations of the same task and select the one you like most though
Surely at that point they could write the code themselves faster than they can review 5 PRs.
Producing more slop for someone else to work through is not the solution you think it is.
Why do you frame the options as "one shot... or... one shot"?
Because lazy people will use it like that, and we are all inherently lazy
It's not much better with planning either. The amount of time I spent planning, clarifying requirements, hand-holding implementation details always offset any potential savings.
Have you never used one to hunt down an obscure bug and found the answer quicker than you likely would have yourself?
Actually, yeah, a couple of times, but that was a rubber-ducky approach; the AI said something utterly stupid, but while trying to explain things, I figured it out. I don't think an LLM has solved any difficult problem for me before. However, I think I'm likely an outlier because I do solve most issues myself anyways.