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Study (N=16) finds AI (Cursor/Claude) slows development (metr.org)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.ml
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Before starting tasks, developers forecast that allowing AI will reduce completion time by 24%. After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20%. Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19%

N = 16

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[–] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

I wish they'd found a larger sample, but this is still interesting. The fact that much of the time is wasted on prompting makes sense. One important thing not mentioned however is that much of the market for vibe-coding tools is non-developers, i.e. people who don't have the knowledge to actually do it themselves.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I think you’ve got the key point here. Most of the commentary on AI focuses on its impact on people that are already good at their jobs. Where I see it having most impact is for people who aren’t good or aren’t capable. It doesn’t make them a good coder, but it might make them a bit better than before.

    The same is true for professional and technical writing. There may be an explosion of people ‘delving’ into topics, littered with em-dashes, and it might take them a while to produce it, but the principle time saving is that I’m not reviewing and editing all the garbage the first time round.

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