> At the is point the best evidence we have is a large volume of extremely experienced programmers - like antirez - saying "this stuff is amazing for coding productivity".

The problem is that we know that developers' - including experienced developers' - subjective impressions of whether LLMs increase their productivity at all is unreliable and biased towards overestimation. Similarly, we know that previously the claims of massive productivity gains were false (no study reputable showed even a 50% improvement, let alone the 2x, 5x, 10x, etc that some were claiming, indicators of actual projects shipped were flat, etc). People have been making the same claims for years at this point, and every time when we actually were able to check, it turned out they were wrong. Further, while we can't check the productivity claims (yet) because that takes time, we can check other claims (e.g. the assertion that a model produces code that doesn't need to be reviewed by a human anymore), and those claims do turn out to be false.

> If you're determined to say "I refuse to accept appeal to authority here, I demand a solution to the measuring productivity problem first" then you're probably in for a long wait.

Maybe, but my point still stands. In the absence of actual measurement and evidence, claims of massive productivity gains do not win by default.