Slop is not necessarily the future • Hacker News Board

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#351

Post by m0llusk » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 1:52 AM UTC

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

There is a huge space of possible software solutions. A very large amount of software that has real value involves using basic methodologies to build interfaces to databases and enable some known business logic. Writing this kind of software is very different compared to making highly general developer tools that need to have finely honed abstractions. LLMs are especially good at whipping up basic apps, but can actually interfere with the process of coming up with and implementing new concepts that operate differently from existing tools. In this respect I find that working with LLMs is very similar to working with graduate students who have energy, drive, and patience, but are also prone to making bad decisions and doing work that ends up being thrown away.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#352

Post by m0llusk » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #100

nocman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is. absolutely false. > The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. also false. People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work qu…

And yet somehow the shittiest buggiest software ends up being the most popular. Look through the list of top apps in mobile app stores, most used desktop apps, websites, SaaS, and all other popular/profitable software in general and tell me where you see users rewarding quality over features and speed of execution.

That is easy. Those top apps in mobile stores are constructed in part with compilers which are under great pressure from developers to generate good code as quickly as possible. There is often bloat at the level of the development environment or some critical library, but core developer tools are a big part of the software space and are made and sold with very different criteria from the most popular apps vended from walled gardens.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#353

Post by saltyoldman » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

nocman wrote: post #84

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is. absolutely false. > The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. also false. People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work qu…

You're responding quite harshly to a pretty reasonable take. I think he means "for the most part" for those statements.

I mean Jira is probably one of the most purchased software packages in the world that is specifically used by developers that care about their craft - you don't want to look at the code, trust me.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#354

Post by boplicity » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 2:00 AM UTC

nocman wrote: post #84

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is. absolutely false. > The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. also false. People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work qu…

> There is no substitute for high quality work.

That's where you get it wrong. The world is full of mediocre and low quality work in many, many fields. We all, in fact, depend on mediocre work in many ways.

Many, many people would prefer a solution with mediocre or even bad code than no solution at all while they wait for "high quality work" that never appears.

The magic of LLMs, especially as the technolgy improves, is that a truly mind boggling number of solutions to problems will be created with thoroughly mediocre (or worse!) LLM generated code. And the people benefitting from those solutions won't care! They'll be happy their problems are being solved.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#355

Post by gmerc » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 2:01 AM UTC

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

Is this like some kind of disorder? I’m asking because as a healthcare tech professional, In reasonably sure you don’t want me to adopt “this product is for entertainment only” copilot and software that’s of bad code quality. People have gotten radiation overdoses from those.

So I’m confused. I really am, help me understand your world view.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#356

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

ramsaybolton wrote: post #294

What I would like to add is that coding in the flow state is underestimated. When your brain just clicks with every change and variable it's just different AND more efficient than doing with AI.

You can have a flow state prompting AI too, which I feel is not talked about enough.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#357

Post by POBIX » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

fnoef wrote: post #107

I wish it was true, but it sounds like copium. I bet garment makers, or artisan woodworkers said the same when big store cheap retails came. I bet they said "people value quality and etc", but in the end, outside of a group of people who has principles, everyone else floods their home with H&Ms and crap from Temu. So yeah, good code might win among small group of principled people, but the majority will not care. And…

Handcrafted furniture costs a lot more money than mass produced furniture.

Software, on the other hand, can be free. Even before LLMs I would argue the best code was found in FOSS projects.

Nobody is going to use sloppy buggy software if a handcrafted well engineered alternative exists, and is free.

In the case of software, the group of people who have principles might be the ones funding FOSS projects, and the software itself would then be enjoyed by all. This is more or less what's already happening today.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#358

Post by socketcluster » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 2:41 AM UTC

I've been talking about 'complexity' for years but business people just didn't get it. Now software development has become almost entirely about complexity management so now I'm hoping that they will finally understand what software engineering actually is. I hope they will finally start valuing engineers who can reduce complexity.

I was always into software architecture and I was dreaming to be a software architect but after completing university, the position was on the way out.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#359

Post by ytoawwhra92 » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 2:45 AM UTC

clan wrote: post #51

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

I respect your opinion and especially your honesty. And at the same time I hope that you will some day be forced to maintain a project written by someone else with that mindset. Cruel, yes. But unfortunately schadenfreude is a real thing - I must be honest too. I have gotten to old for ship now, ask questions later projects.

People with this attitude never end up maintaining anything. When projects get to that phase the work becomes too difficult and boring for them, so they decide that they've "set the team up for long-term success" and move on to a new opportunity.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#360

Post by dzhiurgis » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC

nocman wrote: post #84

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is. absolutely false. > The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. also false. People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work qu…

> The longer your product exists the more important the quality of the code will be. This obsession so many have with "get it out the door in 5 seconds" is only going to continue the parade of garbage software that is slow as a dog, and uses gigabytes of memory to perform simple tasks.

For now. We only call it slop when we notice it. Majority of AI text, music, images, videos and code is indistinguishable and you use it every day.

This whole "treat your code as craft" reminds me of organic farming, zero waste, etc movements. Cute movements that only minority of people care about.