I get its necessary for investment, but I'd be a lot happier with these tools if we didn't keep making these wild claims, because I'm certainly not seeing 10x the output. When I ask for examples, 90% its claude code (not a beacon of good software anyway but if nearly everyone is pointing to one example it tells you thats the best you can probably expect) and 10% weekend projects, which are cool, but not 10x cool. Opus 4.5 was released in Dec 2025, by this point people should be churning out year long projects in a month, and I certainly haven't seen that.

I've used them a few times, and they're pretty cool. If it was just sold as that (again, couldn't be, see: trillion dollar investments) I wouldn't have nearly as much of a leg to stand on

Id wager my life savings that devs aren’t even 1.5x more productive using these tools.

Like others are saying, AI will accelerate the gap between competent devs and mediocre devs. It is a multiplier. AI cannot replace fundamentals, at least not a good helmsman with a good rational, detail-oriented mind. Having fundamentals (skill & knowledge) + using AI will be the cheat code in the next 10 years.

The only historical analogue of this is perhaps differentiating a good project manager from an excellent one. No matter how advanced, technology will not substitute for competence.

I view the current tools as more of a multiplier of base skill.

A 1x engineer may become a 5x engineer, but a -1x will also produce 5x more bad code.