zlacker

I notice that some people have become more productive thanks to AI tools, while others are not.

My working hypothesis is that people who are fast at scanning lots of text (or code for that matter) have a serious advantage. Being able to dismiss unhelpful suggestions quickly and then iterating to get to helpful assistance is key.

Being fast at scanning code correlates with seniority, but there are also senior developers who can write at a solid pace, but prefer to take their time to read and understand code thoroughly. I wouldn't assume that this kind of developer gains little profit from typical AI coding assistance. There are also juniors who can quickly read text, and possibly these have an advantage.

A similar effect has been around with being able to quickly "Google" something. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the same trait at work.

>>smokel+(OP)
Just to thank you for that point. I think it's likely more true than most of us realise. That and maybe the ability to mentally scaffold or outline a system or solution ahead of time.

>>smokel+(OP)
An interesting point. I wonder how much my decades-old habit of watching subtitled anime helps there—it’s definitely made me dramatically faster at scanning text.

>>smokel+(OP)
One has to take time to review code and think through different aspects of execution (like memory management, concurrency, etc). Plenty of code cannot be scanned.

That said, if the language has GC and other helpers, it makes it easier to scan.

Code and architecture review is an important part of my role and I catch issues that others miss because I spend more time. I did use AI for review (GPT 4.1), but only as an addition, since not reliable enough.

>>blub+Af1
do you use anything today for automated code reviews?