We automated everything except knowing what's going on • Hacker News Board

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#21

Post by andai » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

There's a funny angle to all this. There was an article last year where the author asked AI for a web app. It installed a gigabyte of node modules and crashed on startup.

He told it to calm down and just use php, it gave him 100 lines with no dependencies that worked the first time.

The Pieter Levels stack :)

Of course, this is ideal for solo entrepreneur. If you are employed, then you cannot finish it in 100 lines. How will you get paid to maintain it for the next ten years, and hire all your friends to help you?

I think this difference in incentives explains most of what we've been complaining about for the last twenty years.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#22

Post by alanbernstein » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 1:56 PM UTC

silverquiet wrote: post #18

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that. These AIs are legacy codebase generators. Nobody knows how it works and everyone is afraid to touch it.

Anything in production is legacy; I'm pretty sure it happens as soon as the code is shipped regardless of who wrote it.

True, but I think there's another dimension implied: how many devs are left that understand the code? Being able to start at zero is a fascinating surprise (compared to five years ago).

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#23

Post by cowlby » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

bena wrote: post #6

I keep seeing the canard that "Anyone with an idea and access to an AI agent can ship a product. What used to take a team of twenty and six months now takes one person and a weekend. That's not hype. It's happening right now, everywhere, all at once." But I don't see it. Where is this glut of software?

Ever since Opus 4.6 came out, I've "vibecoded" a bunch of personal apps/CLIs that would've taken me months before. Some examples:

- CLI voice changer with cloned Overwatch voices on ElevenLabs.

- Brother P-Touch label maker using HTML/CSS. Their app is absolutely atrocious.

- Converted a FileMaker CRM into a Next.js/Supabase app.

- Dozens of drag-n-drop or 1-click/CLI tools. Think flattening a folder, a zip file.

- Dozens of Chrome Extensions and TamperMonkey user scripts. Think blocking ads with very targeted xpath.

But when I think about sharing them it feels like what's the point since anyone can make them themselves?

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#24

Post by Flashtoo » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

kennethops wrote: post #8

frisia wrote: post #5

Actually unreadable

Im not a writer. Just a guy with an opinion

Then just post your opinions rather than the text the LLM dreamed around your opinions. Short posts and tweets tend to be well-liked on HN, there is no need to puff it up to a big blog post.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#25

Post by frisia » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

kennethops wrote: post #8

frisia wrote: post #5

Actually unreadable

Im not a writer. Just a guy with an opinion

Look, I'm sympathetic to not feeling like you're a good writer, but there are plenty of writing styles which doesn't turn your opinions into overly dramatic AI slop. And now I don't even know which opinions are your own and which are from a GPT, hence my "unreadable" comment even if it sounds harsch. But it literally is impossible to infer what your opinions actually are when they have been butchered this hard in slop.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#26

Post by kennethops » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

gwynforthewyn wrote: post #17

Honestly, the post itself reads very generated, very rage bate. I have so much more faith in us and our hobby/industry than this blog post. There are reports of industries trying to use these tools to generate as much as possible, sure. There are also people generating bad art and unpleasant prose and using llms to generate nonsense they don’t pay attention to. I don’t see why that implies that you or I lost interest…

>Honestly, the post itself reads very generated, very rage bate. I have so much more faith in us and our hobby/industry than this blog post.

Don't get me wrong. I think the future is very bright for software. I have friends who are scientist and biomedical professionals and I am excited to see what they are able to do with the powers of software where they don't need to care about syntax and can only lead with their intentions.

The rage bait part is mainly my frustrations manifesting. As an SRE my annoyances came off a little bit when it comes to how fast developers are shipping vs how fast our rails can maintain things.

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#27

Post by dvsfish » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

DaedalusII wrote: post #19

eventually i realised it was cheaper just to vibecode and buy put options over my company by managing the risk of failure and technical debt with a financial instrument, i have a lot more freedom to move fast and break things, and scale aggressively

Would this not be considered insider trading? Serious question

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#28

Post by kennethops » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:02 PM UTC

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #13

This person has never worked with several decades old government, bank or tax (return) code where all that's ever done is edge cases and implementations of new laws and capabilities being forever bolted on to each other. Systems that were half migrated from a PL/I / Cobol mess to java 7 by Accenture, until the money ran out with the result being that both systems now exist forever and have to be integrated into each…

Cries in defense contractor nosies. (I have)

I wanted to touch on this point but then this post started getting WAY too long.

>the only change AI brings is that even first person developers don't know anymore what the fuck they just deployed.

This to me is going to make your first point 100x worse in every damn way

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#29

Post by digital-cygnet » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

kennethops wrote: post #8

frisia wrote: post #5

Actually unreadable

Im not a writer. Just a guy with an opinion

I like the thought behind the piece, but what I think the criticisms are reacting to is the profusion of short, bursty sentences (just like the ones in the parent post), which can be great when used sparingly, but start to feel repetitive and have a "LinkedIn"-ish vibe, at least to me. For example the very end:

  Most of you won't be able to answer that. And you already know it.
  
  That's the conversation this industry needs to have. Not tomorrow. Now.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way and do continue writing - I enjoyed this piece, just wanted to give some constructive feedback

Re: We automated everything except knowing what's going on

#30

Post by terseus » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #13

This person has never worked with several decades old government, bank or tax (return) code where all that's ever done is edge cases and implementations of new laws and capabilities being forever bolted on to each other. Systems that were half migrated from a PL/I / Cobol mess to java 7 by Accenture, until the money ran out with the result being that both systems now exist forever and have to be integrated into each…

AI may not be the source of the problem but can make it a hundred times worse.