Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 221 posts

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#11

Post by joseda-hg »

ctoth wrote: post #3

The thing is I totally, 100% get this. The other thing I can't help but see though is how excited my non-programmer friends are to finally be able to make software. The sense of pride and accomplishment from non-coders who are finally able to make something work the way they wanted to. We almost need like ... noncanonical software? Not so much forks, but like ... Maybe software as like a cluster? an ecosystem? On-dem…

An ecosystem on shared formats can exist hapily

There's a billion ways of opening a markdown and doing things with it and generally they all coexist hapily

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#12

Post by katerberg »

kvark wrote: post #4

We had a process at one company where you had to create an issue before filing a PR. I found it most non-sensical and introducing friction for no good reason. Very surprised to see the author suggesting it in the article. Review is indeed the main bottleneck now for open source, and we need to solve it. Introducing more friction is hardly helping.

I think the point that he is making is that the additional friction is a good thing and necessary in this case because it's an open source project. It's too easy to do drive-by PRs that don't actually provide value and just eat up review cycles. The issue requirement simply ensures that the requester actually is invested and cares enough about this to get approval before starting work on it.

I can see why that doesn't sound great particularly on a team where everyone knows each other and is working together but it totally makes sense for me if I were maintaining a project that was large enough to get a lot of low-effort PRs coming into it.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#13

Post by CagedCoder »

stantaylor wrote: post #6

Even if this guy were not anti-AI, as the primary maintainer of OS projects, it sounds like he's dealing with a genuine problem. > My initial task when a new unexpected PR arrives is to determine if there is a person behind it or not, and luckily this is easy to figure out in just a few seconds. OK. How? That would have been an interesting explanation to me.

I feel like these 2 sentences answer what the author is looking for:

> I do not want an LLM-generated novel with chapters, bullet points and emojis, just a simple description of the problem in your own voice.

> If I don't see proof of human involvement, then I'm not interested

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#14

Post by awhitty »

dude250711 wrote: post #7
ctoth wrote: post #3

The thing is I totally, 100% get this. The other thing I can't help but see though is how excited my non-programmer friends are to finally be able to make software. The sense of pride and accomplishment from non-coders who are finally able to make something work the way they wanted to. We almost need like ... noncanonical software? Not so much forks, but like ... Maybe software as like a cluster? an ecosystem? On-dem…

When they shoot a little artistic clip with their nice modern iPhone camera, it does not mean they get to insert it into a Hollywood movie.

This analogy makes no sense to me and honestly skews pretty elitist in vibe. iPhone is regularly used in professional videography now. Like, 28 Years Later was shot on iPhone. Indie filmmakers have been using iPhone to break into the industry for years.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#15

Post by raincole »

stantaylor wrote: post #6

Even if this guy were not anti-AI, as the primary maintainer of OS projects, it sounds like he's dealing with a genuine problem. > My initial task when a new unexpected PR arrives is to determine if there is a person behind it or not, and luckily this is easy to figure out in just a few seconds. OK. How? That would have been an interesting explanation to me.

> OK. How?

By vibe. That's what people who believe they can detect AI do.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#16

Post by beering »

ctoth wrote: post #3

The thing is I totally, 100% get this. The other thing I can't help but see though is how excited my non-programmer friends are to finally be able to make software. The sense of pride and accomplishment from non-coders who are finally able to make something work the way they wanted to. We almost need like ... noncanonical software? Not so much forks, but like ... Maybe software as like a cluster? an ecosystem? On-dem…

I agree. For many people, LLMs are the first time that computers do what they tell them to. Not what some big tech PM has decided is or isn’t possible.

At the same time, OP is in the right to reject contributions they don’t want. Nobody providing open-source software is under any obligations to take changes. Forking is still a viable option in 2026. And I don’t think we need an on-demand app store either because the trust issues will still exist for good reason. We can have highly produced software coexisting with LLM agents.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#17

Post by mystraline »

As a systems engineer, ive been a reverse centaur more often than not.

I have a Jira queue. It drives what work I do. I may have some leeway in how I do the work, and what tickets I pull, but Im absolutely at the behest of the ticketing behemoth.

Tickets have been my life since I started helpdesk. And future roles will also be ticketed. And they almost all are customer-facing or system-breakage (which impacts lots of customers).

Im not sure what IT roles im capable of doing wouldnt have tickets. So, yeah. Reverse centaur.. But not an AI driven reverse centaur, yet.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#18

Post by chrisweekly »

kvark wrote: post #4

We had a process at one company where you had to create an issue before filing a PR. I found it most non-sensical and introducing friction for no good reason. Very surprised to see the author suggesting it in the article. Review is indeed the main bottleneck now for open source, and we need to solve it. Introducing more friction is hardly helping.

[dead]

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#19

Post by janalsncm »

ctoth wrote: post #3

The thing is I totally, 100% get this. The other thing I can't help but see though is how excited my non-programmer friends are to finally be able to make software. The sense of pride and accomplishment from non-coders who are finally able to make something work the way they wanted to. We almost need like ... noncanonical software? Not so much forks, but like ... Maybe software as like a cluster? an ecosystem? On-dem…

What is the kind of person who would use such software? What you’re describing is the need for a two sided market where really only one side exists.

A user would have to be someone who doesn’t have access to an LLM to make bespoke software themselves, and isn’t able to use existing software. I think that’s a vanishingly small segment of people.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#20

Post by fantasizr »

I - and many, many others - learned flask from his mega-guide that he obviously spent a lot of time working on.

I feel bad for people like him who get the brunt of dilettantes who can "code" polluting his time and focus. Reminds me of that mitch hedberg joke: "When someone hands you a flyer, it's like they're saying here you throw this away." but for PRs

Post reply on HN