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

#131

Post by Rumudiez » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:44 AM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #119

jdthedisciple wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Why is the answer of LLM-maximalists always you are holding it wrong ? I think a lot of experienced programmers, who have adopted LLMs early on, have the same finding: yes, LLMs give a great productivity boost. No, you cannot let agents completely wild without plenty of human supervision, because it will lead to a big ball of mud and atrophy knowledge of humans. I think these are relevant data points and they should…

look at the sibling reply. these back-handed concessions are always either “AI is a great productivity boost if you’re just slamming out a CRUD web app” or the special snowflake “my big beautiful codebase is too complex.” maybe they are holding it, wrong with attitudes like that it’s hard to take them seriously. the phd holders at my office are some of the most prodigious vibe coders we have

ps: since when was complexity ever a good defense for why your codebase is difficult to work in?

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

#132

Post by fatata123 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:46 AM UTC

schnebbau wrote: post #113

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 has happened to my side project too. There's so much going on in the code now that I can't possibly grok it to make changes safely by myself any more. But I think that's OK. Because I don't have to grok it anymore. I've been crafting beautiful code for almost 20 years - that itch is scratched. Now I just want to be productive and build cool stuff. AI is helping me make a better end-product in a fraction of the t…

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

#133

Post by batuhandumani » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:46 AM UTC

A half-hearted and timid post. It’s very obvious it was written to avoid criticism.

I think the author started writing this on a whim and couldnt bring it to a proper conclusion. What i cant understand is how it managed to get such a high points on hn. Because the piece is completely stale—neither praise nor criticism. The author’s own thoughts are so generic that we hear them every single day in our daily lives, and especially on Hacker News, in the back-and-forth between the “Coddites” and the “Vibers” crowd.

My indirect take is that, since AI coding is already shrouded in uncertainty, there’s no need for it to remain in this kind of fog—this article will lose all relevance within five years and end up proving the author wrong.

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

#134

Post by cube00 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:47 AM UTC

mosura wrote: post #88

faangguyindia wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>? I'm selling it for $1million dollars can it meet that standard. but people have sold terrible codebases for more than a million dollar.

Yeah the financial value of a codebase is in successfully solving a problem, which is independent of code quality. It is a painful lesson for many.

> Yeah the financial value of a codebase is in successfully solving a problem

It doesn't even need do it successfully, plenty of slow buggy codebases that are raking in huge amounts of money every day.

I knew it was bad when I started getting tickets to "improve the skeleton loader" because its displayed for so long the project owner had time to contemplate changes to it.

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

#135

Post by flir » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:47 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…

I've found that "build X with framework Y" produces better results than "build X". Possibly because many architectural decisions have already been made by the framework authors.

Before you throw away, I propose having an LLM write a comprehensive spec from your code, then a clean-room implementation. It's an interesting experiment, if nothing else.

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

#136

Post by techblueberry » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:48 AM UTC

budsniffer952 wrote: post #28

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.

Popped over to HackerNews, read two comment sections and the top comments in both articles were users saying the same thing: "AI can't write code! The whole thing will come crumbling down any minute! Just you wait!" I've never seen this community like this. Are these people cooked? We are years into this and they haven't been able to figure it out? They are going to continue to tell people using these tools successfu…

This is roughly in line with where the thought leadership is:

https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/context-engineeri...

But you know, maybe you’re having a better experience? You should be a consultant.

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

#137

Post by skydhash » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:48 AM UTC

jdw64 wrote: post #67

movedx01 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adoption absolutely did happen, I am not questioning that. What I am questioning is whether it really is the revolution the people selling it want us to believe it is. Just to disclose: I use those every day, I have two Claude Max 20 subscription myself. I am still in doubt how much more productive professionally it made me. I am having a ton of fun in exploring stuff I never would have otherwise though. I define sof…

Senior, I respect your opinion. I think your skills are so advanced that you don't feel the impact as much. That's a different perspective. >I am delighted by the piece of software I use. Those moments are rare and far between, and it's not getting any better. First, regarding how much satisfaction we get from the software we use—I see that part a bit differently. Because that's more about UX and product design than…

> Because that's more about UX and product design than code quality. I think it's because in the business domain, people only attempt safe things.

Not really. It’s mainly about the lack of frustration. People will learn the most obtuse way of using a software if it’s important. But they want to spend that effort only once, and then have valuable results as the ROI. Meaning no random crashes, no slow process,…

When you can have something that runs without babysitting, or just be able to use the tool and do your tasks, it removes a lot of mental load.

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

#138

Post by jaccola » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:49 AM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #126

jaccola wrote: post #24

The test is simple: have we seen great new products or improvements in the products we use over the past 12,24,36 months? The only great new product I’ve used is my LLM of choice, and those labs seem to be hiring more humans than ever. Maybe it’s true that Claude only just got good enough and that 12 months from now our day to day lives will be way better thanks to LLM-driven product improvements/breakthroughs. My be…

Disclaimer: I am not an LLM maximalist, I like to use LLMs, but in a highly controlled way. One exciting development that LLMs have recently started is automated vulnerability discovery. For instance, Chrome solved more bugs in June than over the past two years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49120097 Similarly, the latest Apple security update and the June Android Security Bulletin fixes an insane number of vu…

Yeah I can see this as being an area that will benefit from LLMs. Though, taking it one further, we don’t yet have evidence (so far as I know) that this actually produces more secure software.

It’s not that I’m an LLM hater at all, I use them, I feel like I’m being super productive so I’m not doubting people’s accounts. But if I honestly look back over the past 12 months and ask “have I shipped more value that I would have without LLMs” the answer is probably no.

I think it has helped me learn areas quicker, though for complex mathsy explanations I still ask for it to find me human written posts as Claude’s explanations can be super weird, using convoluted analogies etc..

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

#139

Post by psychoslave » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:53 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…

> but looking at the whole picture everything is subtly wrong in multiple ways.

That would also make a great description for human societies, wouldn't it?

Actually, after second thought, actually LLMs at least give the surface level impression, which might not be exactly the case for humanity at the moment.

Ok, sarcasm apart, I'm fine with LLM at the moment as a technology. How we use it, what impact it has on society is certainly more of a concern than the technology itself. Compared to weapons, at least they're not fundamentally designed specifically to harm and threat.

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

#140

Post by ismailmaj » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 11:53 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…

For my projects, I can produce with LLMs a codebase that I'd be proud of, but it requires extensive use of the plan mode and nagging anytime the implementation looks much more complex than the feature at hand requires.

Anytime I tried spec driven development, it produced total garbage, the problem is that the model usually swings too far, if they write unnecessary complexity, a nag about it and you risk it code golfing, this problem across 100 lines of specs and you're guaranteed it will swing too far on some segments you just wanted X slightly more than Y (usually for me it was reliability dropped for better readability since # users = # developers = 1)

Another thing I dropped is steering implementation design too early, start with the goal and nag in the direction you want, it works well for me but might not work well for big complex codebases.

For now I love LLM coding but I'm sure my opinion will change if I have to review code from a developer that does the 1 prompt = 1 PR without looking at the code jutsu.