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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

#181

Post by yoyohello13 »

acnops wrote: post #130
reconnecting wrote: post #6

Perhaps it's the right moment to start an AI Show HN (Vibe HN as recommended above), as I assume more than half of Show HN is now from ChatGPT/Claude, and it's impossible to cut through this noise with something reliable that humans craft over years. It's fair to give the audience a choice to learn about an AI-created product or not.

AI is eating up everything. So I don't think there will be two groups.

Maybe. It's basically "people who know how shit works" vs "people who don't know how shit works". I hope we still have at least some people in category 1 or else we just end up with Wall-E.

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

#182

Post by wreath »

onetimeusename wrote: post #147
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 think that's a fear I have about AI for programming (and I use them). So let's say we have a generation of people who use AI tools to code and no one really thinks hard about solving problems in niche spaces. Though we can build commercial products quickly and easily, no one really writes code for difficult problem spaces so no one builds up expertise in important subdomains for a generation. Then what will AI be t…

> Then what will AI be trained on in let's say 20-30 years? Old code? It's own AI developed code for vibe coded projects?

I’ve seen variation of this question since first few weeks /months after the release of ChatGPT and I havent seen an answer to this from leading figures in the AI coding space, whats the general answer or point of view on this?

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

#183

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

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.

That's been the trajectory for at least the last 100 years, an endless procession of certifications. Just like you can no longer get a decent-paying blue collar job without at least an HS diploma or equivalent, the days of working in tech without a university education are drying up and have been doing so for a while now.

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

#184

Post by fuzzfactor »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #105
marginalia_nu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most domains, working on a project for a few years will make you an expert.

Working? Maybe. Prompting? Unlikely.

And in some other domains it takes a few decades to get to the top technically, not just a few years.

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

#185

Post by majicDave »

jstrieb wrote: post #174
majicDave wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens all the time, it’s a good thing to really keep in mind. All of my best projects were dismissed initially and continue to be. There is a reddit post where I announced Blockheads to a handful of “looks like a crappy Minecraft ripoff” comments. It went on to be played by 50 million people.

If those announcement posts don't take off, how do you end up finding a community of users/players?

It’s different every time, but basically “marketing”. No matter where you are showing your stuff, it’s in a subset of the population, chances are HN won’t be buying your app subscription. You need to get it in front of your actual audience.

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

#187

Post by wreath »

fainpul wrote: post #129
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…

People who got "enabled" by AI to produce stuff, just need to learn to keep their "target audience of one"-projects to themselves. Right now it feels like those fresh parents who show every person they meet the latest photos / videos of their baby, thinking everybody will find them super cute and interesting.

More like the fresh parents who start schooling everyone else on how to parent…

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

#188

Post by bearjaws »

debarshri wrote: post #93

I think it is true with any distribution channel. When people figure out that it works, then everyone ends up bombarding that channel till it saturates. Vibe coding is not helping either, I guess. Now it is even cheaper to create assets for the distribution channel. I think same thing happened with product hunt.

Add in unemployment rates for devs... Everyone wants to make a side hustle into their job.

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

#189

Post by microflash »

dang wrote: post #177

Yes, we need to do something about this and tomhow and I are talking about it - it's not clear yet what. Raising the quality bar would likely cut down on quantity as a side effect, and that would be a nice solution. One idea that a user proposed is a review queue where experienced HN users would help new Show HN submitters craft their posts to be more interesting and fit HN's conventions more.

To my dismay, the trajectory of Show HN posts looks eerily familiar. ProductHunt followed a similar course (albeit with much more acceleration) and now is just a feed of slop. The signal to noise ratio became so meaningless that I lost all interest. I fear this happening to HN. Any attempt to slow this down is welcome.

I wonder how will this review system work. Perhaps, a Show HN is hidden by default and visible to only experienced HN users who provide enough positive reviews for it to become visible to everyone else. Although, this does sound like gatekeeping to me and may starve many deserving Show HN before they get enough attention.

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