AI hype cycle: Wright brothers edition

The Wright brothers flew in 1903. By 1969, we had supersonic passenger jets.

Sixty-six years from “holy shit, we’re airborne” to breaking the sound barrier with paying customers.

If you plotted that curve in 1970, you’d have predicted personal flying cars by 1990. Teleportation by 2025.

Instead? We’re still cramming into the same 747s from the 1970s, just with shittier legroom and better wifi.

The same exact thing is happening with AI right now.

Some developers are already flying

I know developers who’ve become legitimately 10x more productive in the past year. Not LinkedIn bullshit 10x. Actual 10x.

They’re shipping features that would have taken them weeks to figure out. Building in technologies they’ve never touched before. Writing code that handles edge cases they would have missed.

These people are convinced AI will replace most developers within two years.

Most companies are still building runways

Walk into any big company and ask about their AI productivity gains. You’ll get corporate speak about “exploring opportunities” and “pilot programs.”

The bigger the organization, the smaller the productivity gains. Period.

Not because the technology doesn’t work. Because organizations are slow, political, and bad at change. People need to learn completely new approaches. Teams need new workflows. Legal needs to approve new tools.

Meanwhile, the 10x individual developer is building entire applications in a weekend.

Why every AI prediction sounds insane

Half the tech industry is screaming that software engineering will be dead by 2025. The other half is convinced AI is just fancy autocomplete.

Both sides are extrapolating from their own tiny slice of reality.

The 10x developer thinks everyone will be 10x soon. The person whose team saw zero gains thinks it’s all hype. The startup founder who replaced three junior developers with Claude thinks programming is over. The enterprise architect thinks nothing has changed.

Individual breakthroughs don’t equal industry transformation. They never have.

The Wright brothers didn’t kill the horse and buggy industry overnight. Commercial aviation didn’t become mainstream until decades later.

AI development tools are real. The timeline for widespread adoption is probably longer than the optimists think and shorter than the skeptics hope.

The revolution is happening. Just slower and messier than anyone wants to admit.