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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

#221

Post by lowbloodsugar »

wreath wrote: post #182
onetimeusename wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Is it hard to imagine that things will just stay the same for 20-30 years or longer? Here is an example of the B programming language from 1969, over 50 years ago:

  printn(n,b) {
   extrn putchar;
   auto a;

   if(a=n/b) /* assignment, not test for equality */
      printn(a, b); /* recursive */
   putchar(n%b + '0');
  }
You'd think we'd have a much better way of expressing the details of software, 50 years later? But here we are, still using ASCII text, separated by curly braces.

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

#222

Post by fuzzfactor »

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.

Product Hunt was launched with a non-straightforward approach intended not to appear on the surface as it works behind the curtain.

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

#223

Post by evrenesat »

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.

In my opinion, for open-source projects, scoring the project's AI sloppiness based on the timeline of commits would be a good indicator. If it's completed within a few days, it should require more thorough human review. On the other hand, if the project has been active for a while and received contributions spread throughout that timeline, I think that would indicate accumulated effort (human and/or AI) and higher quality.

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

#224

Post by dylan604 »

bigthymer wrote: post #214
ModernMech wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I would support only allowing Show HN for accounts that can downvote. It's really not such a high threshold.

We would have to prepare for a deluge of accounts posting\commenting just for the sake of accumulating karma to be able to downvote.

That's the key thing to remember here, that any ideas that are implemented will be suspect to gaming just to get around what ever is chosen.

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

#225

Post by netrap »

tempaccount5050 wrote: post #203
carabiner wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your site https://microlandia.city and OP blog https://www.arthurcnops.blog/death-of-show-hn/ as well as most personal sites posted on HN are almost always inaccessible via my corporate job's firewall. Does anyone know why this is? Something with security certificate? They're not explicitly blocked, because you get a "this is blocked" page in that case. With these sites they just show a "can't connect" error.

They probably have a newly registered domain rule.

Seems like .blog .city etc are just banned via cisco umbrella policies...

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

#226

Post by accurrent »

evrenesat wrote: post #223
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.

In my opinion, for open-source projects, scoring the project's AI sloppiness based on the timeline of commits would be a good indicator. If it's completed within a few days, it should require more thorough human review. On the other hand, if the project has been active for a while and received contributions spread throughout that timeline, I think that would indicate accumulated effort (human and/or AI) and higher qu…

Eh IMO any metric like this can be gamed. My project that reached hn front page was coded in a short time (and yes some ai was used), but otoh I think it was something that showed hey you can do this really interesting thing (in my case vlm based indoor location).

Also its not uncommon for weekend projects to be done in a shprt span with just a "first commit" message dump even pre-AI.

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

#227

Post by fuzzfactor »

sumeno wrote: post #97
Nextgrid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between documentation and LLMs. An LLM can be your own personal tutor and answer questions related to your specific code in a way no documentation can. That is extremely helpful until you master the programming language enough.

Vibecoders are never going to master anything

>Vibe coders aren’t interested in mastering a programming language, or even interested in programming.

Somewhere right now there's a complete greehorn vibecoder who's saying "hold my beer" ;)

While they proceed to learn everything they can about the code that the LLM generated for them.

For the next few years, and never come back to drink the rest of the beer :)

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

#228

Post by n_e »

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.

Not sure if it would work for HN / how it could be adapted to HN, but something I noticed on opensource projects, is that once they hit a hurdle, submitters of low quality AI-written PRs don't try to solve it and go elsewhere.

For example, in one project, PRs have to be submitted to the "next" branch and not the default branch. This is written in the CONTRIBUTING.md file, which is linked in the PR template, with the mention that PRs that don't respect that will be close. Most if not all submitters of low-quality PRs don't do anything once their initial PR is closed.

Pretty bummed about that as I just submitted a show HN I'm pretty happy about (it solves an annoying problem I had for years, which I know many people have) and I was looking forward to talk about it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050872)

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

#229

Post by codingdave »

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.

What I see is new users who are trying to share something without having yet understood HN. I get the impression that they think of "Show HN" as no different than "Show and Tell", and that putting the label on their post is communicating the message of "Here is something I want people to see", instead of "Here is something you can try out".

So while I understand that new features on HN are few and far between, a quick validation of "Show HN" posts that says, "I see you are trying to post a Show HN..." with some concise explanation of the guidelines might help. I want to believe that most new users mean well, they just need better explanations.

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

#230

Post by storystarling »

Similar experience. I posted a Show HN two days ago for a children's book generator - type a story idea, get a fully illustrated printed book shipped to you. Offered a free printed book including shipping to the HN community via voucher code. Got 7 points, 2 comments, and zero voucher redemptions. Nobody even ordered the free book.

One of those comments was genuinely useful feedback from Argentina about localization. That alone made it worth posting. But the post was gone from page 1 in what felt like minutes.

What's interesting is this isn't a weekend vibe-coded project - it involves actual physical production, printing, and shipping. But from the outside it probably looks like "another AI wrapper," which I think is the core problem: the flood of low-effort AI projects has made people reflexively skeptical of anything that mentions generation, even when there's real infrastructure behind it.

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