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Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

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Re: Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

#21

Post by Semaphor »

peteforde wrote: post #3

I suspect that this will drive the folks who insist LLM productivity gains are the real hallucinations truly bonkers.

/r/selfhosted also got tons of new submissions, all unmaintainable AI slop. Now that they are only allowed on Fridays, it calmed down again. But I guess folks who insist on AI superiority think that’s a productivity gain.

Re: Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

#22

Post by as1mov »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #12
peteforde wrote: post #3

I suspect that this will drive the folks who insist LLM productivity gains are the real hallucinations truly bonkers.

No, the fact that Show HN is spammed with LLM-generated garbage is what drives me bonkers. The Show HNs are in fact living proof of how illusory LLM productivity gains are, because we are overwhelmed with trivial proof-of-concepts that have no merit, not even the merit of a human having put effort into creating something neat, rather than actually interesting software anybody would try or discuss.

Related that r/selfhosted has banned AI built projects except on Fridays[1] to keep up with the increased deluge of garbage, which are mostly built for CV padding rather than making anything useful for the community.

https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1qfp2t0/mod_ann...

Re: Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

#23

Post by Tade0 »

peteforde wrote: post #3

I suspect that this will drive the folks who insist LLM productivity gains are the real hallucinations truly bonkers.

They are, but in the sense of net productivity gains.

Responsible people who use their knowledge to review LLM-generated code will produce more - up to their maximum rate of taking responsibility.

Irresponsible people will just smear shit all over the codebase.

The jury is out what's the net effect and the agents' level of sophistication is a secondary factor.

Re: Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

#25

Post by alberto-m »

theraven wrote: post #19
alberto-m wrote: post #4

I think I read some days ago another stat, that the average rating of “Show HN” posts is going down. So the pessimistic take is that people feel the bar to present their product in a “Show HN” is lowering. (edit: striked) Is it deliberate that this post appears as “Show HN” itself? I hope not to be too negative, but to qualify as such I would expect much more that a page with two graphs.

No, it wasn’t deliberate to be a Show HN itself, it seemed to be auto updated to that based on the prefix. I’ve tried updating it back.

Thanks for the reply. I'd strike that part of my comment if I could. Consider it taken back.

Re: Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

#27

Post by jacquesm »

peteforde wrote: post #3

I suspect that this will drive the folks who insist LLM productivity gains are the real hallucinations truly bonkers.

AI productivity gains are not found in the slop bucket with projects tossed off after five prompts and zero intention of keeping them alive for the longer run.

Re: Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

#28

Post by anonymous908213 »

7777777phil wrote: post #17
peteforde wrote: post #3

I suspect that this will drive the folks who insist LLM productivity gains are the real hallucinations truly bonkers.

I feel like HN is quite divided about that actually, A couple of days I started a survey which I plan to run monthly to see how the community feels about "LLM productivity etc". Now I have ~250 answers, need a couple more to make it significant but as of now it looks like >90% report productivity gains from AI tools - happy if you participate, only takes a minute: https://agentic-coding-survey.pages.dev/

Note that self-reporting productivity gains is a completely unreliable and unscientific metric. One study[1], small in scope but a noteworthy data point, found that over the course of the study that LLMs reduced productivity by ~20% but even after the fact the participants felt that on average their productivity had increased by ~20%. This study is surely not the end-all be-all and you could find ways to criticise it or say it doesn't apply or they were doing it wrong or whatever reason you think the developers should have had increased productivity, but the point is that people cannot accurately judge their own productivity by vibes alone.

[1] https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

Re: Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

#29

Post by sepositus »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #12
peteforde wrote: post #3

I suspect that this will drive the folks who insist LLM productivity gains are the real hallucinations truly bonkers.

No, the fact that Show HN is spammed with LLM-generated garbage is what drives me bonkers. The Show HNs are in fact living proof of how illusory LLM productivity gains are, because we are overwhelmed with trivial proof-of-concepts that have no merit, not even the merit of a human having put effort into creating something neat, rather than actually interesting software anybody would try or discuss.

This is a valid observation. I wonder though if people who have been coding for decades, but choose to use AI assistance, would fall under the same AI slop category. It’s an interesting dilemma because the overwhelming amount of content getting posted just ends up breeding a ton of negative feelings towards any amount of AI usage.

Re: Show HN posts p/month more than doubled in the last year

#30

Post by jacquesm »

alberto-m wrote: post #25
theraven wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn’t deliberate to be a Show HN itself, it seemed to be auto updated to that based on the prefix. I’ve tried updating it back.

Thanks for the reply. I'd strike that part of my comment if I could. Consider it taken back.

You can, click 'edit'. Up to one hour after posting.
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