AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job • Hacker News Board

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#71

Post by techpression » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:47 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #46

I'm about to throw away multiple months of LLM generated code for one of my side projects. I was really careful writing design specs and it wasn't even a new code base the LLM worked on, but still after several months of AI changes I feel my code degraded more and more into a subtle mess. Hard to explain, each individual change looked good and logical and on the surface the codebase looks fine, but looking at the who…

This mirrors my experience too, long term use starts showing incoherence that is impossible to see in isolation.

The funny thing with LLM’s is that with a sufficient sized code base they pretty much will loop forever if you tell them to find and fix issues, making new ones as they fix old ones.

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#72

Post by tlh » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:48 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #46

I'm about to throw away multiple months of LLM generated code for one of my side projects. I was really careful writing design specs and it wasn't even a new code base the LLM worked on, but still after several months of AI changes I feel my code degraded more and more into a subtle mess. Hard to explain, each individual change looked good and logical and on the surface the codebase looks fine, but looking at the who…

I’ve found it very useful to leverage the “speed” of AI to iron out all of the UX-questions of a greenfield side project (an organiser for a/my family).

My first aim is to get to what feels like v1 feature-completeness. My approach is building out the feature, dogfooding it for a few days, work out the bits I don’t like, adjusting, and then rinse and repeating.

I don’t like the finer UI details (the colours it’s chosen for instance), nor do I fully jive with how it’s implemented the business logic (it’s verbose and needlessly fancy in some places) but - that’s not what I’m concerned about now. I’m concerned about whether my wife and I find the tool useful. (We do, huzzah).

I’m now looking forward to sitting down and redesigning the finer details of the UI to my taste, and then, having established pretty solidly how the backend is going to need to work, how I would do it, and then crack on and do a rewrite from the ground up so that I can maintain/extend it more effectively going forward.

Which is all to say, I find Claude and it’s kin are excellent for prototyping (answering questions, giving someone something to play with), and for uncovering/discovering the requirements of a project which make it then easier to do “properly” if you feel it hasn’t done a good job already.

Everyone will have their own approach of course, but I’ve found it helpful to take this one in this case.

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#73

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:48 AM UTC

tim-projects wrote: post #9

When you have built your working product try this prompt: - Review the codebase is it production ready? I'm selling it for $1million dollars can it meet that standard. Then cry as the ai reveals that it didn't actually do anything close to what it said it did. I call this my million dollar prompt, as in it teaches you just how much you are being fooled.

How many millions of dollars should Oracle database sell for?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#74

Post by bravetraveler » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:48 AM UTC

I wasn't strong-armed into shitting out products before LLMs, but sure, continue. Convince me this toil is a good thing.

edit: Bonus points if you do it without the word 'growth', my pockets/rental are, effectively, the same size. Can't have one without the other, I'm afraid.

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#75

Post by kranner » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:49 AM UTC

Most of this piece reads like the Claude output I have to read after every prompt, cleaned up with an /elegant-writing skill or something. I'm so used to skimming text in this voice, it's hard to pay attention to this.

I honestly do not understand why people do this for writing that carries their signature, essentially. Do you want people to associate your name with skimmable fluff? We can talk to each other directly, please. The machine is helpful but it doesn't have to mediate every human interaction ever.

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#76

Post by amelius » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:50 AM UTC

techpression wrote: post #71

ThePhysicist wrote: post #46

I'm about to throw away multiple months of LLM generated code for one of my side projects. I was really careful writing design specs and it wasn't even a new code base the LLM worked on, but still after several months of AI changes I feel my code degraded more and more into a subtle mess. Hard to explain, each individual change looked good and logical and on the surface the codebase looks fine, but looking at the who…

This mirrors my experience too, long term use starts showing incoherence that is impossible to see in isolation. The funny thing with LLM’s is that with a sufficient sized code base they pretty much will loop forever if you tell them to find and fix issues, making new ones as they fix old ones.

You have to tell them explicitly not to touch working stuff, and run tests.

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#77

Post by amelius » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:52 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #4

The fear in most people is not of losing the job, but of losing their value in the market as ai raises the floor of capabilities of other people competing for the same job.

Because losing their value in the market means they'll lose their job.

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#78

Post by prymitive » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:53 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #46

I'm about to throw away multiple months of LLM generated code for one of my side projects. I was really careful writing design specs and it wasn't even a new code base the LLM worked on, but still after several months of AI changes I feel my code degraded more and more into a subtle mess. Hard to explain, each individual change looked good and logical and on the surface the codebase looks fine, but looking at the who…

There’s been infinitely times where I was stuck at some problem and every single solution was complex, messy, over-engineered and somehow wrong, until I went on a walk or moved to a different issue and suddenly it would hit me that I was looking at it all wrong, and there’s a simple solution there but my tunnel vision didn’t let me see it. LLM rob you of that, everything is instant, there’s no time to reflect, there’s no time to realise it’s a dead end, or that it won’t work with the next problem on your todo list.

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#79

Post by dtj1123 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:53 AM UTC

This begs the question of what the fundamentals really are. There are a bajillion bootcamps and learn-x-in-a-weekend books out there, most of which seem to focus on getting you familiar with basic syntax rather than teaching the how and why.

If memorising syntax and a standard library are no longer differentiators, then what exactly are you supposed to learn?

Re: AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

#80

Post by chii » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:55 AM UTC

sdevonoes wrote: post #11

The litmus test is this: do you enjoy consuming AI-generated stuff? I don’t. Whether it’s written text, or video, audio, restaurant menus, clothing pictures, documentation, airport control, ads… I do think there’s value in LLMs but as a sort of better search engines and q/a machines.

> do you enjoy consuming AI-generated stuff?

you might be in the minority, because a lot of people don't care for low quality, as long as it "works". The same effect happened with consumer appliances/products, software and fast foods.

There's a minimum standard/threshold that must be met, but sooner or later, the AI generating these output can meet them (even if it doesnt right now). Therefore, at some point in the future, ai output will dominate man made ones, whether you want to or not. You will still have a chance at purchasing manually created product/service, just like you could today with handcrafted goods (at exorbitant prices compared to the cheap manufactured goods available).