That’s where it really shines. I have a backlog of small projects (-1-2kLOC type state machines , sensors, loggers) and instead of spending 2-3 days I can usually knock them out in half a day. So they get done. On these projects, it is an infinity improvement because I simply wouldn’t have done them, unable to justify the cost.

But on bigger stuff, it bogs down and sometimes I feel like I’m going nowhere. But it gets done eventually, and I have better structured, better documented code. Not because it would be better structured and documented if I left it to its ow devices, but rather it is the best way to get performance out of LLM assistance in code.

The difference now is twofold: First, things like documentation are now -effortless-. Second, the good advice you learned about meticulously writing maintainable code no longer slows you down, now it speeds you up.