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Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

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Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#21

Post by Planktonne »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #17
dematz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it AI might (might not, but often does!) also save you from doing original thinking in the domain, which in a show my side project is what people are interested in

I don’t know if that’s true, I made a little web app for displaying the schedule for my team based on our billable hours, and I didn’t do any of the scripting myself but I did have to think a lot about what the app would do and what it would look like and what kind of functionality I wanted, tradeoffs between functionality and specific use cases, etc. It just made the scripting part go faster, that’s all.

That's still less thinking overall that someone who thought about all of that and thought about the scripting would have done.

Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#22

Post by bobthepanda »

Shad/cn is a Vercel shipped batteries included framework similar to Bootstrap in the jQuery days. I don’t think that by itself is going to be a good validation of AI slop because it’s a common stack with the Vercel next.js base. And it lets you do a lot of customization so you don’t need to reinvent the wheels on things like accordions and dropdowns.

Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#23

Post by mccoyb »

The problem is not vibe coding itself. The problem is that certain untrained people do not have or perhaps do not care to learn the necessary skills to refine the result into something novel, or clear / precise, something which communicates (clearly) the idea they are trying to convey to others (who are hoping to learn something new).

In a climate where it seems like VC are woefully bereft of the same skills, there's an impetus to just slop garbage up for any vague idea, without taking the care or time to polish it into something which has that intangibly human sense of greatness and clarity.

I see, you've done something -- but why? If you continue to ask this question, you will arrive at good science ... but many submissions are not aimed at that level of communication or stop far ahead of the point at which the question becomes interesting.

There's that phrase: "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt" which strikes as poignant, except it seems like the audience today are also fools ... the inmates are running the asylum.

Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#24

Post by JoelMcCracken »

dematz wrote: post #12
simonw wrote: post #8

I expect most side-projects are being built with AI-assistance now. Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? They're also the ideal place to try out new AI tools that your professional work might not let you experiment with. (The headline of this piece doesn't really do it justice - it misuses "vibe coded" and fails to communicate that the substance of the post is…

>if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it AI might (might not, but often does!) also save you from doing original thinking in the domain, which in a show my side project is what people are interested in

Why I like using AI right now is that I get to try out far more of my own ideas quickly (and find issues with them!)

Before, it was like:

"Oh, X idea is really cool, let me try it!" ... (loses interest before idea validated)

Now: "Oh, X idea is really cool, let me try it!" ... with AI, I get to actually validate that it works (ideally), or reformulate the idea if it doesn't.

Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#25

Post by cmrdporcupine »

The coding tools raise the bar and muddy the waters. If "Show HN" submissions can just as easily be done by myself in a weekend, I don't pay attention. The signal-noise ratio just gets destroyed and the forum will just be ignored.

Likewise, the issue is often that many of these projects show no evidence of long term maintenance. That might be the new signal we watch for?

There also used to be a sense in the tech community of "if you build it they will come" and that has been basically completely lost at this point. Between the discussion earlier this week of people's fraudulent GH stars, and this topic, and the wave of submissions I see on e.g. r/rust, it's just hard to imagine how -- as a pure "tech nerd" -- to get eyes or assistance on projects these days.

I have projects I've held off on "Show HN" for years because I felt I wasn't ready for the flood of users or questions and criticisms. Maybe the jokes on me. (Of course like everyone else these days, I've used AI to work on them, but much of them predate agentic tools.)

Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#26

Post by bobthepanda »

dematz wrote: post #9

Nice list of design patterns, but imo a big unmentioned one is a grid of rounded rects https://correctarity.com/roundedrects (maybe what this post calls "Icon-topped feature card grid." ...that might be the official design pattern term)

Cards have been in vogue for a while and I can’t recall the last time I saw super hard corners on a design system. It’s been a thing since at least Apple filing that patent on rounded corners.

Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#28

Post by shagie »

simonw wrote: post #8

I expect most side-projects are being built with AI-assistance now. Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? They're also the ideal place to try out new AI tools that your professional work might not let you experiment with. (The headline of this piece doesn't really do it justice - it misuses "vibe coded" and fails to communicate that the substance of the post is…

On the visual design traits...

I'm primarily a backend developer. Most of my work has been in serving json or occasionally xml. Spring Shell in Java is something that I'm closer to working with than a GUI. When I've done web work, the most complimentary thing that was said about my design is "spartan".

So, if I was to have a web facing personal project... would black text on a white background with the default font and clunky elements be ok? I know we are ok with it on the HN Settings page. They work... but they don't meet what I perceive other people have as minimum standards for web facing interfaces today.

And so... if I was to have some web facing project that I wanted to show to others, I'd probably work with some AI tooling to help create a gui, and it would very likely have the visual design traits that other AI generated front ends have.

Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#29

Post by locknitpicker »

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #24
dematz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it AI might (might not, but often does!) also save you from doing original thinking in the domain, which in a show my side project is what people are interested in

Why I like using AI right now is that I get to try out far more of my own ideas quickly (and find issues with them!) Before, it was like: "Oh, X idea is really cool, let me try it!" ... (loses interest before idea validated) Now: "Oh, X idea is really cool, let me try it!" ... with AI, I get to actually validate that it works (ideally), or reformulate the idea if it doesn't.

> Why I like using AI right now is that I get to try out far more of my own ideas quickly (and find issues with them!)

This.

Coding assistants handle a great deal of the drudge work involved in refactoring. I find myself doing far more deep refactoring work as quick proofs of concept than before. It's also quite convenient to have coding assistants handle troubleshooting steps for you.

Re: Scoring Show HN submissions for AI design patterns

#30

Post by gf000 »

dematz wrote: post #12
simonw wrote: post #8

I expect most side-projects are being built with AI-assistance now. Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? They're also the ideal place to try out new AI tools that your professional work might not let you experiment with. (The headline of this piece doesn't really do it justice - it misuses "vibe coded" and fails to communicate that the substance of the post is…

>if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it AI might (might not, but often does!) also save you from doing original thinking in the domain, which in a show my side project is what people are interested in

But I might want some cool original project with a boring but working web UI, so that other people can actually try out what I have created.
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