Slop is not necessarily the future • Hacker News Board

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#141

Post by dirkc » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:50 PM UTC

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

I view every single line of code as a liability, the best solution is if you can avoid writing any code. Does that put me into group 1 or group 2?

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#142

Post by mattmanser » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:52 PM UTC

fnoef wrote: post #107

I wish it was true, but it sounds like copium. I bet garment makers, or artisan woodworkers said the same when big store cheap retails came. I bet they said "people value quality and etc", but in the end, outside of a group of people who has principles, everyone else floods their home with H&Ms and crap from Temu. So yeah, good code might win among small group of principled people, but the majority will not care. And…

For a lot of companies their entire income entirely depends on their uptime.

Might be fine if your HR software isn't approving holiday requests, but your checkout breaks, there's no human that can pick apart the mess and you lose your entire income for a week and that might be the end of the business.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#143

Post by jplusequalt » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:53 PM UTC

Nevermark wrote: post #86

ambicapter wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least it exists, which it probably wouldn't have if developed with "camp 2" tendencies. Ah yes, if you aren't shitting code out the door as fast as possible, you're probably not shipping anything at all.

That isn't a fair reading.

Neither is the original assertion. There are thousands of examples of exceptionally well crafted code bases that are used by many. I would posit the Linux kernel as an example, which is arguably the most used piece of software in the world.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#144

Post by applfanboysbgon » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #100

nocman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is. absolutely false. > The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. also false. People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work qu…

And yet somehow the shittiest buggiest software ends up being the most popular. Look through the list of top apps in mobile app stores, most used desktop apps, websites, SaaS, and all other popular/profitable software in general and tell me where you see users rewarding quality over features and speed of execution.

You have it backwards. Excellent software becomes popular, and then becomes enshittified later once it already has users. Often there is a monopoly/network effect that allows them to degrade the quality of their software once they already have users, because the value in their offering becomes tied to how many people are using it, so even a technically superior newcomer won't be able to displace it (eg. Youtube is dogshit now but all of the content creators are there, and all of the viewers are there, so content creators won't create content for a better platform with no viewers and viewers won't visit a better platform with no content).

If your goal is to break into the market with software that is dogshit from day 1, you're just going to be ones of millions of people failing their get-rich-quick scheme.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#145

Post by stephc_int13 » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

The economic angle is not as clear cut as the authors seem to think.

There is an abundance of mediocre and even awful code in products that are not failing because of it.

The worst thing about poorly designed software architecture is that it tends to freeze and accumulate more and more technical debt. This is not always a competitive issue, and with enough money you can maintain pretty much any codebases.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#146

Post by quantummagic » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

bakugo wrote: post #118

quantummagic wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very useful insight. It nicely identifies part of the reason for the stark bifurcation of opinion on AI. Unfortunately, many of the comments below it are emotional and dismissive, pointing out its explanatory limitations, rather than considering its useful, probative value.

"I have an opinion and everyone on the planet agrees with me, if you disagree, you don't matter" is not a useful insight, and is, in fact, far more emotional and dismissive than any of the replies to it.

That's a horribly broken misrepresentation of what was said in the original post. If that's what you took away from it, you're not reading carefully or critically.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#147

Post by skybrian » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

I think for this to work you need some kind of complexity budget. AI's are good at optimizing but you need to give them the right goals.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#148

Post by Xirdus » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

ttamslam wrote: post #99

nocman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is. absolutely false. > The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. also false. People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work qu…

> People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work quickly, and is obviously created by people the care deeply about the quality of the product they produce (you know, the kind that acutally read bug reports, and fix problems quickly). I would classify all of those as…

Good abstractions translate directly into how quickly the devs can fix bugs and add new features.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#149

Post by joe_the_user » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

seamossfet wrote: post #31

I find most developers fall into one of two camps: 1. You treat your code as a means to an end to make a product for a user. 2. You treat the code itself as your craft, with the product being a vector for your craft. The people who typically have the most negative things to say about AI fall into camp #2 where AI is automating a large part of what they considered their art while enabling people in group #1 to iterate…

I was just using an app that competes with airbnb. That the app's code is extraordinarly unreliable was a significant factor in my interactions with others on the app, especially, I gradually realized I couldn't be sure messages were delivered or data was up-to-date.

That influenced some unfortunate interactions with people and meant that no one could be held to their agreements since you never knew if they received the agreements.

So, well, code quality kind of matters. But I suppose you're still right in a sense - currently people buy and use complete crap.

Re: Slop is not necessarily the future

#150

Post by arijun » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

ttamslam wrote: post #99

nocman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has ever made a purchasing decision based on how good your code is. absolutely false. > The general public does not care about anything other than the capabilities and limitations of your product. also false. People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work qu…

> People may not know that the reason they like your product is because the code is so good, but everyone likes software that is mostly free from bugs, performs extremely well, helps them do their work quickly, and is obviously created by people the care deeply about the quality of the product they produce (you know, the kind that acutally read bug reports, and fix problems quickly). I would classify all of those as…

But those aesthetics stem from that need for fewer bugs, performance, maintainability. Identifying/defining code smell comes from experience of what does and doesn’t work.

> I wouldn't care so long as I wasn't expected to maintain it.

But, if you’re the one putting out that software, of course you will have to maintain it! When your users come back with a bug or a “this flow is too slow,” you will have to wade into the innards (at least until AI can do that without mistakes).