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Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

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Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#321

Post by dash2 »

searls wrote: post #73

The answer is that we're making it right now. AI didn't speed me up at all until agents got good enough, which was April/May of this year. Just today I built a shovelware CLI that exports iMessage archives into a standalone website export. Would have taken me weeks. I'll probably have it out as a homebrew formula in a day or two. I'm working on an iOS app as well that's MUCH further along than it would be if I hand-r…

Yeah, I released a new version of a little open source project based almost entirely on vibe-coding with Claude/Codex. It was more fun than bashing out my own code, and despite all the problems others have mentioned (ignored instructions, not using libraries, etc.), it was probably faster than if I'd added the new features myself.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#322

Post by nullwriter »

For me personally has been a good productivity tool. Mostly if I'm doing a side project, I can get up to speed with pretty much any language/framework and have it running in FAR less time than if I had to go through docs and set up my dev environment for said project.

There's really a lot to get from this "tool". Because in the end its a tool, and knowing how to use it is the most important aspect of it. It takes time, iteration, and practice to understand how to effectively use it

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#323

Post by guappa »

safety1st wrote: post #271
photonthug wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Look this isn't a forum for general advocacy of Marxist political thought, it just isn't. That's off topic. Whereas it IS a forum for discussing the biggest tech court case of the century. The site was not established to give equal time to all political ideologies in all threads, which is what you seem to be implying. This is all in the Hacker News guidelines. Let me paste the relevant part for you since you don't se…

Hackers find communism interesting :)

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#324

Post by colechristensen »

isodev wrote: post #307
materielle wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that AI isn’t actually the root of the problem here. It’s that we are heading towards a big recession. As in all recessions, people come up with all sorts of reasons why everything is fine until it can’t be denied anymore. This time, AI was a useful narrative to have lying around.

> we are heading towards a big recession Who is we? One country heading into a recession is hardly enough to nudge the trend of "all things code"

America's recessions are global recessions.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#325

Post by bmiselis »

That's all based on the assumption that if you can build something in 10% of the time it'd take you to build the same thing without AI, then you'll spend this 90% of your new spare time to build something else next. What if you don't and you'll just use that time to spend with your family? The data won't show it.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#326

Post by guappa »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #152
The_Fox wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rapid growth of revenue of AI model companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. You can't use growth of AI companies as evidence to refute the article. The premise is that it's a bubble. The growth IS the bubble, according to the claim. > I don't know why the author of TFA claims that he can't make a bunch of one-off apps I agree... One-off apps seem like a place where AI can do OK. Not that I care about it. I want AI t…

Bubbles are born out of evaluations, not revenue. Web3 was a bubble because the money its made wasn't real productivity, but hype cycles, pyramid schemes, etc. AI companies are merely selling API calls, there is no financial scheming, it is very simply that the product is worth what it is being sold for. > I want AI that can build and maintain my enterprise B2B app just as well as I can in a fraction of the time, and…

Does the revenue cover the costs?

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#327

Post by ethanwillis »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #244
neffy wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it´s really not - it's exactly what they are. Multi-dimensional pattern matching machines, using massive databases put together from resources like stack overflow, Clegg's (every cheaters go to for assignment answers, massive copyright theft etc.). If that wasn´t the case, there wouldn't be jobs right now writing answers to feed into the databases. And that´s actually quite useful - given that most of this materi…

Look into every human’s brain and you’d see the same thing. How many humans can come up with novel, useful patents? How many novel useful patents themselves are just variations of existing tech? All intelligence is pattern matching, just at different scales. AI is doing the same thing human brains do.

Seeing as your LLMs need the novel output of human brains to even exist or expand capabilities, quite a lot.

But even if it's not a lot, it's more than the number of LLMs that can invent new meaning which is a grand total of 0.

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#328

Post by guappa »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #127
gdbsjjdn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read TFA, which shows that developers are slower with AI and think they're faster ? The two types of responses to AI I see are your very defensive type, and people saying "I don't get it".

The article is one person recording their own use of AI, finding no statistical significance but claiming since that the evaluated ratio of AI:human speed in performing various coding tasks resembled the METR study, that AI has no value. People have already talked about issues with the METR study, but importantly with that study and this blog post, it querying a small number of people using AI tools for the first tim…

> The article is one person recording their own use of AI

It's not ONE person. I agree that it's not "every single human being" either, but more of a preliminary result, but I don't understand why you discount results you dislike. I thought you were completely rational?

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/11/ai_code_tools_slow_do...

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#329

Post by [deleted] »

Kiro wrote: post #253
mvdtnz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs can be automated to do busy work and although they may take longer in terms of clock time than a human, the work is effectively done in the background. What is this supposed busy work that can be done in the background unsupervised? I think it's about time for the AI pushers to be absolutely clear about the actual specific tasks they are having success with. We're all getting a bit tired of the vagueness and h…

No, you've got it backwards. If anything, people are getting tired of comments like yours.

[deleted]

Re: Where's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up

#330

Post by ethanwillis »

tomrod wrote: post #90
SchemaLoad wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my experience, it excels in blank canvas projects. Where you've got nothing and want something pretty basic. The tools can probably set up a fresh React project faster than me. But at least every time I've tried them on an actual work repo they get reduced to almost useless. Which is why they generate so much hype. They are perfect for tech demos, then management wonders why they aren't seeing results in…

Exactly. It quickly builds a lot of technical debt that must be paid down, especially for people writing code in areas they aren't deep in. For tight tasks it can be super helpful -- like for me, an AI/Data Science guy, setting up a basic reverse proxy. But I do so with a ton of scrutiny -- pushing it, searching on Kagi or docs to at least confirm the code, etc. This is helpful because I don't have a mental map about…

What do you mean by you don't have a mental map about a reverse proxy?
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