Funnily enough I saw this post as I was placing my HN account on hiatus, because I'm tired pretending that the quality of discourse is on par with what I've been used to read and participate in.
We're obviously in an era where "good enough" is taken so far that, what used to be the middle of the fictional line is not the middle point anymore but a new extreme. You're either someone who cares for the output or someone who cares how readable and easy to extend the code is.
I can only assume this is done on hopeful purpose, with the hope that the LLM's will "only keep improving linearly" to the point where readability and extendability is not my problem by it's "tomorrow's LLM" problem.
Ok but if you're a person that likes HN discourse but thinks "eternal september" has happened ... what's your plan?
You'll still come here, read the comments, see something engaging and want to reply and... feel sad because shakes fist at [datacenter] clouds it's all just bots talking to each other anyway.
Well. My assumptions are based on the that the alternative would never matter. He'd simply stop existing (in HN-space), and that's an overtly less-fun universe to live in.
We certainly do suddenly live in "interesting times".
The thing I can't stand is the absolute certainty of the boosters. It's almost religious.
AI is the future. AI will do this. AI will cause that. It is inevitable. Everything is obviously changing.
They leave no room left for debate. No openness to pushback. And no evidence or proof. It just is because it is, and if you don't believe it, you're simply wrong. We saw the same sort of attitudes with blockchain and NFTs.
Any quality, useful (commercial) piece of software made with only AI code would suffice. Any successful AI-written indie game. Any successful AI-written library.
The proof should be in the pudding. Claude Code has been out for a year, and the boosters are saying they are orders of magnitude more productive, so we should have seen some kind of successful output within an order of magnitude of the time it would have taken to develop using traditional, non-LLM tools.
Where is the agent-coded Photoshop clone eating Adobe's lunch? Where is the agent-coded Quicken clone which puts the original out of business? Where is the agent-coded hit video game? All we are seeing so far are "Show HN" level projects.
The only thing LLMs seem to be speeding up is people's mouths.
> You're either someone who cares for the output or someone who cares how readable and easy to extend the code is.
Which of course is a lie propagated by those who want to cast the disbelievers as mentally defective. Why the hell would you care how readable and easy to extend the code is if you weren’t interested in the result?
We're obviously in an era where "good enough" is taken so far that, what used to be the middle of the fictional line is not the middle point anymore but a new extreme. You're either someone who cares for the output or someone who cares how readable and easy to extend the code is.
I can only assume this is done on hopeful purpose, with the hope that the LLM's will "only keep improving linearly" to the point where readability and extendability is not my problem by it's "tomorrow's LLM" problem.