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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

#41

Post by sixtyj »

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 have talked with some friends who are long-time programmers (20+ experience). Even they (all) admit that they use Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Google Antigravity or AI Studio - you name it.

So in future everything’s gonna be “agentic”, (un)fortunately.

Everytime I write about it, I feel like a doomsayer.

Anthropic admits that LLM use makes brain lazy.

So as we forgot remembering phone numbers after Google and mobile phones came, it will be probably with coding/programming.

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

#42

Post by cobolexpert »

Had a funny experience with this some weeks ago. I started developing a small side project and after a week I wondered if this existed already. To my surprise, someone had already built something relatively similar _with the exact same name_ (though I had chosen mine as a placeholder, still funny though) only 2 weeks before, and posted it in Show HN.

I took a look at the project and it was a 100k+ LoC vibe-coded repository. The project itself looked good, but it seemed quite excessive in terms of what it was solving. It made me think, I wonder if this exists because it is explicitly needed, or simply because it is so easy for it to exist?

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

#44

Post by ben_w »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #21
mchaver wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think HN is a very particular group of people and not representative of the market for a lot of the products we make. We tend to like open-source things, ask lots of technical questions and complain about minute things. Also, Show HNs tend to perform better if they are quick to use (no sign in required, don't need to download, etc.).

It's also a pretty big lottery. Two nearly identical projects can get very different receptions depending on the phase of the moon.

If there's a non-lottery option for $6m in revenue and $4.5m profit over a few years, I wouldn't be alone in wanting to find it and work that option.

As per the old efficient market jokes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029044

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

#45

Post by marxisttemp »

bko wrote: post #3

Reminds me of the quote: "Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded" Some of it is "I wish things I think are cool got more upvotes". Fare enough, I've seen plenty of things I've found cool not get much attention. That's just the nature of the internet. The other point is show and share HN stories growing in volume, which makes sense since it's now considerably easier to build things. I don't think that's a bad thi…

This is a forum called Hacker News. It’s for technical people. Perhaps these LLM-generated slop projects could get posted on Product Hunt or somewhere focused on the creative product side of tech and not technical knowledge and discussion

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

#47

Post by nkrisc »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #4

I am a major advocate for AI assisted development. Having said that, it used to feel part of an exclusive club to have the skills and motivation to put a finished project on HN. For me, posting a Show HN was a huge deal - usually done after years of development - remember that - when development of something worthwhile took years and was written entirely by hand? I don't mind much though - I love that programming is…

> I don't mind much though - I love that programming is being democratized and no longer only for the arcane wizards of the back room.

Programming has long been democratized. It’s been decades now where you could learn to program without spending a dollar on a university degree or even a bootcamp.

Programming knowledge has been freely available for a long time to those who wanted to learn.

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

#48

Post by reconnecting »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #40
reconnecting wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, may I ask what network exactly you used?

We don't use one. Got connected through with the first affiliates in a paid/private community in that particular niche

This is helpful. Just to clarify, so you had created your own affiliate network and run this manually? Tracking, payouts, etc?

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

#49

Post by jack_pp »

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.

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

#50

Post by m4tthumphrey »

I find this very interesting, but am I being dense here? https://www.arthurcnops.blog/images/hn-show-dead-one-point.s...

The legend says SHNs are getting worse, but surely if the % of SHN posts with 1 point is going DOWN (as per graph) then it's getting better? Either I am dense or the legends are the wrong way round no?

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