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- Hacker News
- How long it takes for a seasoned developer to write a full app with database design, full authentication register/login/logout/forgot/session, basic crud for all entities, payment processing, admin dashboard with analytics, recent users, transactions, moderation, etc
Usually from 1 to 3 months
Now it all can be developed in just 5 mins, add cosmetic changes in just 24 hours and you have a fully functioning app already deployed in production
So if that doesn't make you a 10X developer you are not using enough AI
by Kuyawa - > Now it all can be developed in just 5 mins
Please go ahead and post a YouTube video showing us all how to do it.
- 10% is still huge.by UltraSane
- it's much lower than common claims about AI.by smcg
- 10% in profit is huge but that's not what the article is about.
- 10% seems low. I think 1.5-3x is more like it without sacrificing quality. You can easily go 10x if you don’t care about the results too much.by maleero
- > if you don’t care about the results too much.
if you like slop
by type0 - I mean, they went and measured it, you're just "feeling" it?by didibus
- unless AI also speeds up the 84% of work that isn't coding, that is not possible.by smcg
- 3x? a year of work in 4 months?
it's almost August - companies should have two years of progress since Jan 1 2026.
by whateveracct - > You can easily go 10x if you don’t care about the results too much.
People are also much faster when they dont care about quality at all.
by watwut - There are probably larger gains in some areas like testing and coding. other areas, less so as they depend on messy data. I can tell you that only some areas of project management benefit from AI. the rest is more of a people problem.by Tagbert
- My rather simplistic take:
Everybody have access to the same LLMs. Eventually if everybody is a "Nx engineer" (see PS below), then nobody is. Just a new baseline.
Once you are at this point, you can either invest further in LLMs, marginally increasing "productivity", or invest in people and culture, increasing potential for innovation by bringing in deep domain expertise that is not in any LLM and never will be.
PS: many measure "Nx engineer" by lines of code or number of "features" someone churns out; a better metric would be real world impact. Can I 10x my "made the world a better place" metric with LLMs? Hard to say. Probably not.
by mstaoru - AI has the potential to be extremely powerful but it is also very new. People and organisations are just at the beginning of the learning process.
- Sure but the hype has been about the 10x productivity increases and how less employees are needed. Also all the AGI/singularity stuff being just around the corner, not simply AI potentially making employees a lot more productive.by goatlover
- This is very similar to how you can double the employees in a company and only get marginal improvement in productivity.
If that’s true, AI gives the same gains doubling labour. No?
by simianwords - If you don’t get return on productivity then you cut and get savingsby jimz12
- > Our team at DX analyzed engineering velocity from November 2024 to February 2026
In my experience Claude Code only really started to be really strong in December 2025 and most people didn’t notice/adopt it until Opus 4.6, which launched in Feb 2026. So I’d expect quite a different result if measure since then.
by evanmoran - My unsolicited thoughts:
* AI will drive additional features as development accelerates
* There will be a window where fast adopting AI companies can deliver features faster than peers
* Those fast adopting AI companies will be able to garner additional revenue
* Gap closes as AI benefits slow in their impact to feature development and slower adopting companies catch up
* Companies that were faster adopters can no longer charge more for additional revenue without giving up market share to now caught-up competitors
* New normal is that companies are in a bind - they have to pay for tokens/AI aided development else they lose speed and therefore market share - but the paying is now without additional revenue and exists as a tax
Assumptions:
* No AGI
* LLMs have bounded impact on features
* Timeframe is long enough that companies that trail in AI won't be starved out
by mycentstoo - * AI will drive 10x bike shedding for 90% of the consumers diluting any real speed up, except the one...autist.by cyanydeez
- > There will be a window where fast adopting AI companies can deliver features faster than peers
The fundamental problem is having people doing the right things. Lines of code does not equal real economic value.
I think AI will have a much different effect: raw headcount will no longer give large companies the same moat that they once had.
If AI makes a 10x engineer into an 100x engineer and unlocks this whole world of productivity, getting them to actually deliver 100x requires the proper culture where they aren't blocked by environmental factors, management, and incentive structure.
10x -> 100x is an extreme example, but the point stands: if AI amplifies our productivity and productivity is determined by motivation + environment + alignment on priorities, in order to realize the advantage from AI, a company needs to both embrace it and have the right culture
by matrix87 - > There will be a window where fast adopting AI companies can deliver features faster than peers >Those fast adopting AI companies will be able to garner additional revenue
The companies going 50% slower on reliable features that customers want to pay for will continue to wipe the floor with the hyper productive companies producing fluff.
- The variation in individual developer throughput was as much as 20x pre-AI. 10% is basically nothing. You’d be better off firing your worst performer and replacing them with someone good (or great).
- Good luck getting those devs. Between the fallout of covid and AI in education, there is likely half an upcoming generation poorly educated and comparatively less qualified.
Right now the market favors employers, but I think when the sobriety sets in this will rapidly change. Senior devs are gonna get more expensive. Companies should massively invest in education programs.
by jijijijij