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Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

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214 points Brajeshwar | 1 comments | 31 Aug 25 14:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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yodsanklai ◴[31 Aug 25 21:40 UTC] No.45087351[source]▶
Seems about right for me (older developer at a big tech company). But we need to define what it means that the code is AI-generated. In my case, I typically know how I want the code to look like, and I'm writing a prompt to tell the agent to do it. The AI doesn't solve any problem, it just does the typing and helps with syntax. I'm not even sure I'm ultimately more productive.
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danielvaughn ◴[31 Aug 25 22:33 UTC] No.45087699[source]▶
Yeah I’m still not more productive. Maybe 10% more. But it alleviates a lot of mental energy, which is very nice at the age of 40.
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darkwater ◴[01 Sep 25 08:04 UTC] No.45090610[source]▶
For all the folks on the "reduce mental burden", "reduce cognitive load" train, are you all aware that this basically means you are exercising less your brain day in and day out, and in the end you will forget how to do things? You will learn how to guide an AI agent, but until the day an AI agent is perfect (and we don't know if we will ever see that day), you are just losing inch by inch your ability to actually understand what the agent is writing and what is going on.

I'm pretty radical on this topic but for me cognitive load is good, you are making your neurons work and keep synapses in place where they matter (at least for your job). I totally accept writing down doc or howto to make doing some action in future easier and reduce that cognitive load, but using AI agent IMO is like going to bike in the mountain with an electrical bike.

Yes, you keep seeing the wonderful vistas but you are not really training your legs.

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1. wiz21c ◴[01 Sep 25 14:46 UTC] No.45093049[source]▶
you are obviously not past 50 years old. At that age, eventhough I "train" (as you imply it) a lot (I code about 50 hours a week, 40 at work, the rest for my own projects; not of them easy, my job is writing numerical code for simulation and my pet project is writinga very accurate emulator (which implies physics modelling, tons of research, etc)). I can definitely feel I'm not as productive as before (before I could sustain 60 hours a week) eventhough I do feel I'm using my brain to the maximum...

So yeah, past a certain age, you'll be happy to reduce your mental load. No question about it. And I feel quite relieved when Claud writes this classic algorith I have understood long ago and don't want to re-activate in my brain. And I feel quite disappointed when Claude misses the point and I have to code review it...