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

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

#271

Post by SoftTalker »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #221
wreath wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I observed this myself at least 10 years ago. I was reflecting on what I had done in the approximately 30 years I had been programming at that time, and how little had fundamentally changed. We still programmed by sitting at a keyboard, entering text on a screen, running a compiler, etc. Some languages and methodologies had their moments in the sun and then faded, the internet made sharing code and accessing documentation and examples much easier, but the experience of programming had changed little since the 1980s.

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

#272

Post by argee »

jack_pp wrote: post #49
reconnecting wrote: post #6

Perhaps it's the right moment to start an AI Show HN (Vibe HN as recommended above), as I assume more than half of Show HN is now from ChatGPT/Claude, and it's impossible to cut through this noise with something reliable that humans craft over years. It's fair to give the audience a choice to learn about an AI-created product or not.

I suspect the OG, grass fed, organic, gluten free, no AI Show HN will be dead. If I used LLMs to generate a few functions would I be eligible for it? What constitutes "built this with no/ minimal AI"? Maybe we should have a separate section for 80%+ vibe coded / agent developed.

HN already has a mechanism for flagging posts. If flagging low effort/trivial show HN posts were normalized, I suspect it would work just fine: if a human can't easily decide whether or not to flag it, they likely wouldn't.

As dang posted above, I think it's better to frame the problem as "influx of low quality posts" rather than framing policies having to do explicitly with AI. I'm not sure I even know what "AI" is anymore.

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

#273

Post by vunderba »

codegeek wrote: post #270
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.

May be dont show them under "Show HN" unless the post has accumulated a certain number of points/upvotes ? Just like a regular new post comes on front page.

I think this already happens but the threshold might be pretty low - there's a separate shownew page and if it gets sufficient upvotes it appears in the regular "Show HN".

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

#274

Post by mathgladiator »

There should probably be "Show Vibe:" simply because this is something new. This is something radical.

I was a skeptic last year, and now... not so much. I am having Claude build me a distributed system from scratch. I designed it last week as I was admitting to myself the huge failure of my big "I love to code" project that I failed to get traction on.

It took me a week to even give the design to claude because I was afraid of what it meant. I started it last night, and my jaw is dropped. There is a new skill being grown right now, and it... is something.

It certainly isn't nothing, and I for one am curious to simply see what people are making with vibes alone. It's fascinating... and horrifying.

But, I have learned to silence that part of me that is horrified since the world never cared for what I find beautiful (i.e. terrible languages like JavaScript)...

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

#277

Post by zeras »

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.

Every system can be gamed, but if it were me and I were looking for a simple filtering solution, I would do something like this ..

Set a policy of X comments required per submission in the last 30 days (not counting last 24 hours) for all submissions, not just "Show HN:" posts.

Meaning, users would need to post X comments before they could post a submission and by not counting the last 24 hours, someone couldn't join, post X comments and immediately post a submission.

It would limit new submission posts to people who are active in the community so they would be more familiar with the policies and etiquette of HN along with gaining an idea of what interests its members.

One thing I noticed recently while going through several of the Show HN submissions was that a lot of the accounts had been created the same day the submission was made.

My guess is HN has become featured on a large number of "Where do I promote/submit my _____?" lists in blogs, social media, etc. to the point that HN is treated like a public bulletin board more than a place to share things with each other in the community.

I love the Show HN section because so many interesting things get posted there but even I have cut back on checking it lately because there are simply too many things posted to check out.

I hope they do something to improve it.

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

#278

Post by majicDave »

voy707 wrote: post #246
majicDave wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens all the time, it’s a good thing to really keep in mind. All of my best projects were dismissed initially and continue to be. There is a reddit post where I announced Blockheads to a handful of “looks like a crappy Minecraft ripoff” comments. It went on to be played by 50 million people.

What the actual f. I am one of those 50 million people, played Blockheads all the time as a teen and had no idea I would randomly stumble over the dev around here. Great work indeed, thanks for the fond memories I made on my 4th gen iPod touch, playing that game :)

Aw thanks! I always love to hear this, makes my day every time :)

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

#279

Post by IsTom »

anthonypasq wrote: post #265
foxmoss wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who posts blogs and projects out of my own enjoyment, no AI for code generation, handed edited blog, I still have no idea how to signal to people that I actually know what I’m talking about. Every step of the process could’ve been done by an LLM, albeit worse, so I don’t have a way of signifying my projects as something different. Considering putting a “No LLMs used in this project” tag at the start but th…

> I still have no idea how to signal to people that I actually know what I’m talking about. presumably if this is true, it should be obvious by the quality of your product. If it isnt, then maybe you need to need to rethink the value of your artisanal hand written code.

I think that the problem is that LLMs are good at making plausible-looking text and discerning if a random post is good or bad requires effort. And it's really bad when signal-to-noise ratio is low, due to slop being easier to make.

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

#280

Post by disiplus »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #143
fainpul wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who got "enabled" by AI to produce stuff, just need to learn to keep their "target audience of one"-projects to themselves. Right now it feels like those fresh parents who show every person they meet the latest photos / videos of their baby, thinking everybody will find them super cute and interesting.

Yeah, I think it's sort of an etiquette thing we haven't arrived at yet. It's a bit parallel to that thing we had in 2023 where dinguses went into every thread and proudly announced what ChatGPT had to say about the subject. Consensus eventually become that this was annoying and unhelpful.

Tell that to linkedin group. they keep doing that, they dont credit it, but i assume at least 60% of other people can tell.
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