Coding agents have replaced every framework I used • Hacker News Board

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#241

Post by omnicognate » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

woeirua wrote: post #197

HighGoldstein wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who knows, maybe soon enough we'll have specially trained de-slopper bots, too. Fire, meet oil.

The naysayers said we’d never even get to this point. It’s far more plausible to me that AI will advance enough to de-slopify our code than it is to me that there will be some karmic reckoning in which the graybeards emerge on top again.

What point have we reached? All I see is HN drowning in insufferable, identical-sounding posts about how everything has changed forever. Meanwhile at work, in a high stakes environment where software not working as intended has actual consequences, there are... a few new tools some people like using and think they may be a bit more productive with. And the jury's still out even on that.

The initial excitement of LLMs has significantly cooled off, the model releases show rapidly diminishing returns if not outright equilibrium and the only vibe-coded software project I've seen get any actual public use is Claude Code, which is riddled with embarrassing bugs its own developers have publicly given up on fixing. The only thing I see approaching any kind of singularity is the hype.

I think I'm done with HN at this point. It's turned into something resembling moltbook. I'll try back in a couple of years when maybe things will have changed a bit around here.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#242

Post by rsolva » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

I have had the same experience when building simple websites for myself and others. I did it as a test to begin with, but it worked out so well that I have kept at it for a while. The core concept for my experiment was to have no dependencies other than PHP and a web server. Longevity is the goal, I should be able to leave a project for years and it should just keep on running.

Source code is here: https://forge.dmz.skyfritt.net/ruben/folderweb.

It is kind of a mini-framework, but really more of a core that can be expanded upon. A few simple ideas that has been codified. It is mainly a router that does very specific things with some convenient features built-in, and with the option to build plugins and templates on top of this core. The customization and freedom it enables is fantastic!

I used to worry that AI would lead to a regression toward the mean, but for this specific use case I think it can have the opposite effect. It can cause a flourish of experiments and custom-tailored solutions that enables a richer online experience. It demands a certain discipline in the way you build, to avoid making a long-term mess, but having just a little bit of experience and insight into general web development goes a long way to keep things tidy and predictable.

Have anyone else had similar experiences?

EDIT: One live site where I have built on top of FolderWeb, is https://stopplidelsen.no (Norwegian)

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#243

Post by FeteCommuniste » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

pragmatic wrote: post #224

drcode wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of AI in terms of its long term consequences, but being able to "just do things" with the aid of AI tools, diving head first into the most difficult programming projects, is going to improve the human programming skills worldwide to levels never before imaginable

How would it improve skills? Does driving a car improve your running speed?

I've found AI handy as a sort of tutor sometimes, like "I want to do X in Y programming language, what are some tools / libraries I could use for that?" And it will give multiple suggestions, often along with examples, that are pretty close to what I need.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#244

Post by bthornbury » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

rglover wrote: post #139

A significant number of developers and businesses are going to have an absolutely brutal rude awakening in the not too distant future. You can build things this way, and they may work for a time, but you don't know what you don't know (and experience teaches you that you only find most stuff by building/struggling; not sipping a soda while the AI blurts out potentially secure/stable code). The hubris around AI is goi…

Why does there seem to be such a divide in opinions on AI in coding? Meanwhile those who "get it" have been improving their productivity for literally years now.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#245

Post by sonofhans » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

redleggedfrog wrote: post #208

rglover wrote: post #139

A significant number of developers and businesses are going to have an absolutely brutal rude awakening in the not too distant future. You can build things this way, and they may work for a time, but you don't know what you don't know (and experience teaches you that you only find most stuff by building/struggling; not sipping a soda while the AI blurts out potentially secure/stable code). The hubris around AI is goi…

The future is already here. Been working a few years at a subsidiary of a large corporation where the entire hierarchy of companies is pushing AI hard, at different levels of complexity, from office work up through software development. Regular company meetings across companies and divisions to discuss methods and progress. Overall not a bad strategy and it's paying dividends. A experiment was tried on a large and ve…

In a veritable ocean of opinions it is excellent to see a detailed, first-hand report. Many thanks!

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#246

Post by FeteCommuniste » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

superze wrote: post #232

HighGoldstein wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Correct. Those who wave away AI and refuse to engrain it into their workflows are going to be left behind in the dust. Similar to those who waved away crypto and are now left behind in the dust, yes?

You forgot NFTs

Remember when the geniuses at Andreessen Horowitz were dumping hundreds of millions into the "metaverse?"

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#247

Post by straydusk » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

rglover wrote: post #139

A significant number of developers and businesses are going to have an absolutely brutal rude awakening in the not too distant future. You can build things this way, and they may work for a time, but you don't know what you don't know (and experience teaches you that you only find most stuff by building/struggling; not sipping a soda while the AI blurts out potentially secure/stable code). The hubris around AI is goi…

Have you considered that betting against the models and ecosystem improving might be a bad bet, and you might be the one who is in for a rude awakening?

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#248

Post by samiv » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

Next up "coding agents replaced me"

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#249

Post by SamPatt » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

TideAd wrote: post #192

Ocha wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you skipped the code review and just checked that it does what you needed it to do?

GPT-5 codex variants with xhigh reasoning make great code reviewers.

5.2 Codex is excellent at reviewing commits. I haven’t used 5.3, I assume it's as good or better.

Especially for large commits, it's become indispensable.

Re: Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

#250

Post by peteforde » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

alexalx666 wrote: post #194

peteforde wrote: post #83

I have been using Cursor w/ Opus 4.x to do extensive embedded development work over the past six months in particular. My own take on this topic is that for all of the chatter about LLMs in software engineering, I think a lot of folks are missing the opportunity to pull back and talk about LLMs in the context of engineering writ large. [I'm not capitalizing engineering because I'm using the HN lens of product develop…

In my experience, often the libs provided by manufacturers are thin wrappers over physical interface setup and communication in the form of a single header and cpp file. Isnt it easier to just use them instead of generating differently phrased copies of them?

The vast majority of parts do not have libraries provided by a manufacturer.

Instead, you get a datasheet (if you're using a well-known part) that contains a list of registers which you need to either write functions against or hope someone on GitHub has done the work for you.

Some display modules do come with sample code that you can build (on a good day) to test things out, but these are almost always half-baked and feel more like HELLO WORLD than something you'd use as a cornerstone of your product development.

Other parts come with sample code that is explicitly designed to work with an expensive $200 "dev board" that you're supposed to use to generate the code you're intended to drop into your project. It's just my opinion, but I'd rather use an LLM for this and skip the dev board stage.

The reason libraries like Adafruit Graphics exist is precisely because the code that comes with the display panels they sell is usually less helpful than if it didn't exist.