>But each time I suspected I could have done it better and faster manually.
I've heard this said so many times, but my experience has just been so dramatically the opposite that it rings false. But geohot seems to be a pretty productive and smart guy, so it's hard to just dismiss what he's saying.
I get the sense that he's truly one of the 10x engineers. And maybe he can do it faster and better manually. But for those of us who aren't 10x, I think it lets us bridge that gap. Now we're getting back to "status anxiety": is this an attack on his ego, if the average becomes 10x?
Anecdote: Over 2 weeks of spare time, I used AI tooling to build a fairly sophisticated debian package caching proxy server (~72KLOC, 27K implementation, 45K tests). This would have easily taken me 6 months of focused time to implement by hand. I literally couldn't have done it because I can't take that much time off work and I have other weekend/evening obligations.
Exactly my thoughts, I believe that the 10x engineers are basically living in a bubble and completely oblivious to the average developer/engineer (I consider myself average). Yes the LLMs cannot bring the level of sophistication that geohot would have but they totally could satisfy the needs of an average developer and their average job. More than 95% engineers are not having the problems that geohot is solving and most of our works is straightforward that any LLM can do, thus enabling us to do more of the same and possibly focus on slightly abstract problems if we have the time. Someone said couple of months ago that manual coding will be a privilege and I see that now.
I've heard this said so many times, but my experience has just been so dramatically the opposite that it rings false. But geohot seems to be a pretty productive and smart guy, so it's hard to just dismiss what he's saying.
I get the sense that he's truly one of the 10x engineers. And maybe he can do it faster and better manually. But for those of us who aren't 10x, I think it lets us bridge that gap. Now we're getting back to "status anxiety": is this an attack on his ego, if the average becomes 10x?
Anecdote: Over 2 weeks of spare time, I used AI tooling to build a fairly sophisticated debian package caching proxy server (~72KLOC, 27K implementation, 45K tests). This would have easily taken me 6 months of focused time to implement by hand. I literally couldn't have done it because I can't take that much time off work and I have other weekend/evening obligations.