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[return to "Two kinds of AI users are emerging"]
1. danpal+vd[view] [source] 2026-02-02 01:44:03
>>martin+(OP)
I've noticed a huge gap between AI use on greenfield projects and brownfield projects. The first day of working on a greenfield project I can accomplish a week of work. But the second day I can accomplish a few days of work. By the end of the first week I'm getting a 20% productivity gain.

I think AI is just allowing everyone to speed-run the innovator's dilemma. Anyone can create a small version of anything, while big orgs will struggle to move quickly as before.

The interesting bit is going to be whether we see AI being used in maturing those small systems into big complex ones that account for the edge cases, meet all the requirements, scale as needed, etc. That's hard for humans to do, and particularly while still moving. I've not see any of this from AI yet outside of either a) very directed small changes to large complex systems, or b) plugins/extensions/etc along a well define set of rails.

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2. K0balt+uy[view] [source] 2026-02-02 05:23:10
>>danpal+vd
It seems to be fantastic up to about 5k loc and then it starts to need a lot more guidance, careful supervision, skepticism, and aggressive context management. If you’re careful, it only goes completely off the rails once in a while and the damage is only a lost hour or two.

Overall, still a 4x production gain overall though, so I’m not complaining for $20 a month. It’s especially good at managing complicated aspects of c so I can focus on the bigger picture rather than the symbol contortions.

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