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Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

arthurcnops.blog

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Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#131

Post by Gigacore »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #10

I don't actually mind AI-aided development, a tool is a tool and should be used if you find it useful, but I think the vibe coded show HN projects are overall pretty boring. They generally don't have a lot of work put into them, and as a result, the author (pilot?) hasn't generally thought too much about the problem space, and so there isn't really much of a discussion to be had. The cool part about pre-AI show HN is…

I shared a well-thought vibecoded app on ShowHN last month. It took a few hours to get POC and two weeks to fully develop a product to meet my requirements. Nobody cared.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#132

Post by lotsofpulp »

kykat wrote: post #124
SCdF wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and were gonna see this everywhere that AI can touch. Our filter functions for books, video, music, etc are all now broken. And worst of all that breaking coincides with an avalanche of slop, making detection even harder. There is this real disconnect between what the visible level of effort implies you've done, and what you actually have to do. It's going to be interesting to see how our filters get rewired…

My prediction is that reputation will be increasingly important, certain credentials and institutions will have tremendous value and influence. Normal people will have a hard time breaking out of their community, and success will look like acquiring the right credentials to appear in the trusted places.

The recent past was a nice respite from a strict caste system, but I guess we’re going back.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#133

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

kykat wrote: post #124
SCdF wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and were gonna see this everywhere that AI can touch. Our filter functions for books, video, music, etc are all now broken. And worst of all that breaking coincides with an avalanche of slop, making detection even harder. There is this real disconnect between what the visible level of effort implies you've done, and what you actually have to do. It's going to be interesting to see how our filters get rewired…

My prediction is that reputation will be increasingly important, certain credentials and institutions will have tremendous value and influence. Normal people will have a hard time breaking out of their community, and success will look like acquiring the right credentials to appear in the trusted places.

This isn't new- it's been happening for decades.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#134

Post by argee »

rubslopes wrote: post #115
marginalia_nu wrote: post #10

I don't actually mind AI-aided development, a tool is a tool and should be used if you find it useful, but I think the vibe coded show HN projects are overall pretty boring. They generally don't have a lot of work put into them, and as a result, the author (pilot?) hasn't generally thought too much about the problem space, and so there isn't really much of a discussion to be had. The cool part about pre-AI show HN is…

I predict that now that coding has become a commodity, smart young people drawn to technical problem-solving will start choosing other career paths over programming. I just don't know which ones, since AI seems to be commoditizing every form of engineering work.

When I was growing up (millennial) it seemed to me that the default for smart young people drawn to technical problem solving was something like aerospace, software or hardware was more or less a fun hobby, like it was for Steve Wozniak. Nobody cared whether or which of these were a commodity, which is what happens when you actually enjoy something.

These days I do see a lot of people choosing software for the money. Notably, many of them are bootcamp graduates and arguably made a pivot later in life, as opposed to other careers (such as medicine) which get chosen early. Nothing wrong with that (for many it has a good ROI), but I don’t think this changed anything about people with technical hobbies.

When you’re young, you tend not to choose the path the rest of your life will take based on income. What your parents want for you is a different matter…

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#135

Post by [deleted] »

SirFatty wrote: post #116
zero_shift wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the great benefits of AI tools, is they allow anyone to build stuff... even if they have no ideas or knowledge. One of the great drawbacks of AI tools, is they allow anyone to build stuff... even if they have no ideas or knowledge. It used to be that ShowHN was a filter: in order to show stuff, you had to have done work. And if you did the work, you probably thought about the problem, at the very least the pro…

"One of the great benefits of AI tools, is they allow people to build stuff, even if they have no ideas or knowledge." Wait, what? That's a great benefit?

[deleted]

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#136

Post by mmarian »

mchaver wrote: post #38
marginalia_nu wrote: post #10

I don't actually mind AI-aided development, a tool is a tool and should be used if you find it useful, but I think the vibe coded show HN projects are overall pretty boring. They generally don't have a lot of work put into them, and as a result, the author (pilot?) hasn't generally thought too much about the problem space, and so there isn't really much of a discussion to be had. The cool part about pre-AI show HN is…

I see a lot of projects repeated: screen capture tool, LLM wrapper, blog/newsletter, marketing tool for reddit/twitter, manage social media accounts. These things have been around for a while so it is really easy for an LLM to spit them out for someone that does not know how to code.

It's because the common belief that you should build copies of whatever SaaS makes decent money. What they don't mention is that people need to have a very good reason why they decide to go for your bare-bones MVP instead of a well-established solution.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#137

Post by zero_shift »

kykat wrote: post #124
SCdF wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and were gonna see this everywhere that AI can touch. Our filter functions for books, video, music, etc are all now broken. And worst of all that breaking coincides with an avalanche of slop, making detection even harder. There is this real disconnect between what the visible level of effort implies you've done, and what you actually have to do. It's going to be interesting to see how our filters get rewired…

My prediction is that reputation will be increasingly important, certain credentials and institutions will have tremendous value and influence. Normal people will have a hard time breaking out of their community, and success will look like acquiring the right credentials to appear in the trusted places.

Maybe my expensive university degree was worth it after all

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#138

Post by acnops »

mozz100 wrote: post #36

Side question: I love the charts in your blog post. Would you be able to share how they were generated?

Charts were vibe-coded in a not-yet-shareable way. It's pure SVG. I asked it to take inspiration from https://www.star-history.com/.

These days I guess we don't want a library? I can create an MIT-licensed repo with some charts you can point your AI agent to, if it helps?

The font is Gaegu.

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#139

Post by joncoded »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #110
SCdF wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and were gonna see this everywhere that AI can touch. Our filter functions for books, video, music, etc are all now broken. And worst of all that breaking coincides with an avalanche of slop, making detection even harder. There is this real disconnect between what the visible level of effort implies you've done, and what you actually have to do. It's going to be interesting to see how our filters get rewired…

People will build AI 'quality detectors' to sort and filter the slop. The problem is of course it won't work very well and will drown all the human channels that are trying to curate various genres. I'm not optimistic about things not all turning into a grey sludge of similar mediocre material everywhere.

Exactly, and we will have those who will "game" the "detectors" like they already "game" the social media "algorithms" :\

Re: Is Show HN dead? No, but it's drowning

#140

Post by trizoza »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
trizoza wrote: post #23

Time for a new category? "Slop HN: Claude built this mini tool for me" - would be lol to see the "slop" in the header right in the middle of "show | jobs" -> "show | slop | jobs"

And a lifetime ban if you show slop under 'Show HN'.

Or a button to "vote as slop" which would automatically move it from "Show HN" to "Slop HN" :D
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