“How Much Are LLMs Actually Boosting Real-World Programmer Productivity?” by Thane Ruthenis

LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

LLM-based coding-assistance tools have been out for ~2 years now. Many developers have been reporting that this is dramatically increasing their productivity, up to 5x'ing/10x'ing it.
It seems clear that this multiplier isn't field-wide, at least. There's no corresponding increase in output, after all.
This would make sense. If you're doing anything nontrivial (i. e., anything other than adding minor boilerplate features to your codebase), LLM tools are fiddly. Out-of-the-box solutions don't Just Work for that purpose. You need to significantly adjust your workflow to make use of them, if that's even possible. Most programmers wouldn't know how to do that/wouldn't care to bother.
It's therefore reasonable to assume that a 5x/10x greater output, if it exists, is unevenly distributed, mostly affecting power users/people particularly talented at using LLMs.
Empirically, we likewise don't seem to be living in the world where the whole software industry is suddenly 5-10 times [...]
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
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First published:
March 4th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tqmQTezvXGFmfSe7f/how-much-are-llms-actually-boosting-real-world-programmer
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.