61–70 of 77 posts
Is that bad? Maybe not! But it's unfair to tar the people here pointing it out as paranoid.
It’s become somewhat of a HN “flex” to call something out as AI slop, and it almost always comes across as preachy and just plain wrong
This is the half of that sentence that gets you an upvote from me.
I'm not as sure about the first part of your comment though, because it's really only a certain subset of users here doin' it. Most of the rest of us don't really seem to care nearly as much about such petty things as hunting down users of "AI" to publicly shame them for it as that small group does. Now actual "slop" (often obvious) is maybe a bit more universally hated here (and elsewhere, I'm sure), but that's a whole different phenomenon from the AI "witch hunters".
i hope this was vibe coded, because I'd hate to think that tiny dark-gray text on a black background was a conscious choice
Hi, author here. I didn't vibe code this and have put considerable amount of effort in explaining the ideas. I have used Claude for review and help with visuals. My aim was just to help others understand these concepts easily. Thanks for your feedback, i'll improve the design and reading experience.
there were no comments when i was posting mine, so i wanted to clarify i didn't mean to pile on the ai-written accusations. didn't seem like that was the case to me from the parts i've read. i'm just in the corner shouting at the claudes for being bad at frontend.
Writing out my nod of appreciation to counterbalance some of the negativity. I do enjoy the effort and thought you into this essay. I didn’t read the whole thing, just a few sections from the beginning, and I think you do a great job explaining how these concepts evolved from simple beginnings. You’ve condensed down a lot of concepts I learned through research and trial-and-error over my career as a SWE. Thank you fo…
Activating aeroplane mode after loading the page prevents any animations that weren't in view beforehand from playing... Weird
Not sure what all the hate is about. Very informative, interesting, and enjoyable to read and learn.
Very well written and presented, thank you! Reminds me of Bartosz Ciechanowski's works: https://ciechanow.ski If I may ask, what stack do you use for the inline interactive elements and would you choose anything different after having done it this way?
I had no plans for inline interactive elements when I started out. It was just a plain static site using Astro, with my content in markdown files.
When I thought of including interactive elements, I saw that Astro supported MDX, which lets you embed custom JavaScript components. At the start I was just using plain JavaScript, SVG, and CSS transitions to do the animations, but as the simulations became more complex, I started using React to manage state better.
Weird comments on this. I found the writing to be excellent. The animations are a bit small and associated text even smaller on mobile but this doesn't read as AI slop to me at all. Anything that makes technology more accessible and understandable is a win in my book so kudos for doing it.