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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

#451

Post by queenkjuul »

torginus wrote: post #276
rootusrootus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate That's insane. Who the hell pulls a number out of their ass and declares it the new reality? When it doesn't happen, he'll pin the blame on you, but everyone else above will pin the blame on him . He's the one who will get fired. Laying off unnecessary developers is the answer if LLMs turn out to make us all so muc…

The whole 'startup/scaleup' culture (which have become the industry titans of today) - is insane and have been insane for as long as it has been a thing - the culture of either 'just grow and figure out how to monetize'(Social media, food delivery etc.) or 'we're selling you this technology that doesn't exist yet but going to be insanely valuable in the future (AGI, self driving)' or 'we're selling shovels to the fir…

I actually had a lot of fun building a native .NET web frontend in VB 2005 recently lol. I thought it kind of amazing that i could just bind UI controls directly to state objects and the UI would automatically React to any changes i made. Felt very natural as a modern web dev lol. Found a lightweight .NET JSON library that was compatible all the way back to VB 2005 as well.

In case you also need to control Spotify from Windows 95 :D

https://github.com/queenkjuul/spotify97

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

#452

Post by andrekandre »

safety1st wrote: post #331
wolvesechoes wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The original premise of the site was for startup founders and hackers to discuss startup founder and hacker things. Good that people finally open their eyes. > But, also I am not one of them, I am a capitalist, I own a small business And that's a false-consciousness at its finest. You are closer to these workers than to those that really own capital.

Not really. I grew up below the poverty line. Everyone I knew was working class. Some of these people are still very dear to me. However, I did something which virtually none of them did. I wanted to get out. So I identified a skillset that the world desperately wanted, and I spent thousands of hours learning how to build and sell with that skillset. Frequently I was criticized or ridiculed or simply ignored, but it…

  > The biggest thing I don't like about these Marxist politics warriors is that they actually seem resigned to a future where huge corporations control our destiny, as long as an even huger government extracts some value for the little people.
legit question, what kind of marxist wants large corporations controlling everything?

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

#453

Post by queenkjuul »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #98
bsder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not forgive them. We already have a description for them: "A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

I think this hits at the heart of why you and so many people on HN hate AI. You see yourselves as the disenfranchised proletariats of tech, crusading righteously against AI companies and myopic, trend-chasing managers, resentful of their apparent success at replacing your hard-earned skill with an API call. It’s an emotional argument, born of tribalism. I’d find it easier to believe many claims on this site that AI i…

I'm motivated by Claude Code producing useless garbage every time i ask it to do anything, and Google giving me AI summaries about things that don't exist

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

#454

Post by queenkjuul »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #240
UncleMeat wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that if there are productivity gains that everyone should benefit And if they don't, then you'd understand the anger surely. You can't say "well obviously everybody should benefit" and then also scold the people who are mad that everybody isn't benefiting.

i’m not scolding anyone who is mad that not everyone is benefitting

I mean you certainly fooled us all in that front

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

#455

Post by pabs3 »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #420
pabs3 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start a worker-owned tech co-op? Not much point though, since people are going to pay AI to write their code instead, and so the market for consultants will dry up. Probably lots of market space for fixing up broken AI code though :)

Don't you think consultants get hired to fix up code? If so, why would their market dry up? If anything, I would expect it to explode

That was what I said in my last sentence. The market that will dry up is writing code in the first place.

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

#456

Post by queenkjuul »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #175
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " These companies' revenues aren't emerging from nothing. People aren't paying them billions unless there is value in the product. " Oh, of course not. Just like people weren't paying vast sums of money for beanie babies and dotcoms in the late 1990s and mortgage CDOs in the late 2000s [EDIT] unless there was value in the product.

Those are fundamentally different. If people on this site really can't tell the difference then it makes sense why people on HN assume AI is a bubble. People paid a lot for beanie babies and various speculative securities on the assumption that they could be sold for more in the future. They were assets people aimed to resell at a profit. They had no value by themselves. The source of revenue for AI companies has inh…

Dotcoms and CDOs absolutely had perceived intrinsic value

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

#457

Post by rootusrootus »

cmckn wrote: post #218
rootusrootus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My manager told me that the time to deliver my latest project was cut to 20% of the original estimate That's insane. Who the hell pulls a number out of their ass and declares it the new reality? When it doesn't happen, he'll pin the blame on you, but everyone else above will pin the blame on him . He's the one who will get fired. Laying off unnecessary developers is the answer if LLMs turn out to make us all so muc…

> He's the one who will get fired. I wouldn’t count on it.

In some cases, I'm sure it would play that way. But I've been on both sides, and most places I've worked have been more reluctant to fire engineers than managers.

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

#458

Post by [deleted] »

yetihehe wrote: post #421
patapong wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep agreed... It's a bit like sifting gold, most of what it produces is crap, but if you stay with it long enough and put in enough effort you will eventually have something that works well. Part of the issue is that it is so fast to get to a working prototype that it feels like you are almost there, but there is a lot of effort to go.

> that it feels like you are almost there, but there is a lot of effort to go. People made tools specifically to make templates look like templates and not a finished product, just because client was ready to push the product just after seeing real looking mockups of interface.

[deleted]

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

#459

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

viridian wrote: post #383
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure they justify their strong opinions on the grounds that ChatGPT, no less, had individually and specifically told each and every one of them that they're the single most leading expert in immunology in the world.

This post doesn't make any sense. I've never seen an LLM proclaim anyone to be an expert unabetted, alone the leading expert globally. And on the other side of the coin, very few people are willing to believe an obvious sycophant making claims of their greatness they themselves don't even believe.

“Vibe physics” - https://futurism.com/former-ceo-uber-ai

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

#460

Post by SchemaLoad »

dm270 wrote: post #289
captainkrtek wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this: If I as a reviewer don’t know if the author used AI, I can’t even assume a single human (typically the author) has even read any or major parts of the code. I could be the first person reviewing it. Not that it’s a great assumption to make, but it’s also fair to take a PR and register that the author wrote it, understands it, and considers it ready for production. So much work, outside of tech as well…

I find this disrespectful by the author. I’m sure I’ve had colleagues at work that did this to me: throwing ai generated code at the reviewers with the mindset like "why should I look at it? That's what the reviewer does anyway".

I always passively call out the submitter on this stuff with comments like "Can you explain to me why you did this? Can you explain what this is expected to return" etc.

Usually gets them to sort out their behavior without directly making accusations that could be incorrect. If they really did write or strongly review the code, those questions are easy to answer.

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