Don't fall into the anti-AI hype • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#551

Post by afavour » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:00 AM UTC

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #311

embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

You’re right of course. For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”. That makes it feel miserable instead of joyous. Sitting around waiting while it spits out tokens that I then have to carefully look over and tweak feels like very hard work. Compared to entering flow and churning out those tokens myself, which feels effortless once I get going. Probably other people feel differently.

The incredible thing (to me) is that this isn’t even remotely a new thing: it’s reviewing pull requests vs writing your own code. We all know how different that feels!

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#552

Post by jcheng » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:09 AM UTC

tymscar wrote: post #531

simonw wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty common position: "I don't worry about getting left behind - it will only take a few weeks to catch up again". I don't think that's true. I'm really good at getting great results out of coding agents and LLMs. I've also been using LLMs for code on an almost daily basis since ChatGPT's release on November 30th 2022. That's more than three years ago now. Meanwhile I see a constant flow of complaints fro…

I think you are right in saying that there is some deep intuition that takes months, if not years, to hone about current models, however, the intuition some who did nothing but talk and use LLMs nonstop two years ago would be just as good today as someone who started from scratch, if not worse because of antipatterns that don’t apply anymore, such as always starting a new chat and never using a CLI because of context…

> 95% of Claude and 5% of you, while still better than me (and your average Joe), is nowhere near the same jump from 95% Claude and 5% me.

I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure it is true. Take simonw and tymscar, put them each in charge of a team of 19 engineers (of identical capabilities). Is the result "nowhere near the same jump" as simonw vs. tymscar alone? I think it's potentially a much bigger jump, if there are differences in who has better ideas and not just who can code the fastest.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#553

Post by asdefghyk » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:09 AM UTC

About AI writing Code, fixing bugs, and other programmer tasks.

What's missing is (captured) the test of the changed software to verify the fixes solved the problem and no other problems where introduced ....

Then a analysis of the original software changes. An analysis of the test results, test cases, test evidence to ensure it is appropriate and adequate.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#554

Post by __0x01 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:10 AM UTC

Often when I look closely at the output of LLM generated code, I see repetition, redundant logic and deeply hidden bugs.

Notwithstanding the above, to my understanding LLM services are currently being sold below cost.

If all of the above is true, at some point the degredation of quality in codebases that use these tools will be too expensive to ignore.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#555

Post by epolanski » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:10 AM UTC

Madmallard wrote: post #538

epolanski wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no war, it's just that the internet pushes the more controversial narratives up. The overwhelming majority of users use and see the benefits of AI and at the same time are fully aware that you won't move software by copy pasting a jira task and lots of thinking is involved into planning and reviewing the changes.

Lol there's definitely a war on hacker news There's vested interests posting 20 replies in a single thread that benefits them and flagging replies that don't There's literally 20-25% of dissenters comments in each of these posts being repeatedly flagged.

You're witch hunting.

I haven't flagged or downvoted anybody and I have no vested interest in anything. Not sure what my cause should be and what would be my benefit.

My profile contains my full name, you can search me, I'm a random freelancer, not somebody with any stakes in pushing AI.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#556

Post by nephihaha » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:13 AM UTC

harel wrote: post #522

nephihaha wrote: post #408

Universal Basic Income is not the panacea it's claimed to be. UBI gives government more control over individuals' finances, especially those without independent means. Poverty is also the result of unfair taxation, where poor people face onerous taxes while receiving less and less in return, and the wealthy avoid tax at every turn. Or that it is difficult for people to be self-employed due to red tape favouring big b…

I don't think UBI will be enough. All existing debt needs to be erased as well. Otherwise, UBI means nothing if it all goes to repay old debt. If UBI is less than my mortgage, bills and other loan repayments, what good is it?

Debt is a major problem for sure, and a cornerstone of our economic system. There should have been mandatory debt protection during that lockdown but there wasn't.

UBI potentially leads to inflation. If everyone has X amount of income then rents and prices go up accordingly.

Taxation is totally unfair. 20% of most of what we buy here is going into government coffers, raising our cost of living. We get less and less in return as public services are slashed. Add onto that other taxes, and it is the government, not just corporations who are major instigators of debt and the poverty trap...

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#557

Post by braden-lk » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:16 AM UTC

AI tools are indeed are a revolution of software engineering. That said, it's easy to be a fearless advocate for revolutionary tech when, no matter what happens, you are already set for life.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#558

Post by akkad33 » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

There's no skill in using AI. I spent 3 hours trying to build something like a table visualiser that creates a visualization of SQL schema relationship. I wrote simple prompts, tailored them using LLMs and fed them back into another LLM. Went on about 2 hours iterating on outputs until it looked like what I want. Result? It produces an output. The outputs worked well for most part but the results were variable. The arrows would sometimes not be in place. Sometimes you get 100 instead of 1. It was slow. And what I did learn from this that I didn't already know? Zero! On the other hand if I'd tried to figure out myself how to do it, I would have built something not only deterministic and faster , but I'd have gained some new experience and skills along with it of solving a problem.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#559

Post by CityOfThrowaway » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:22 AM UTC

akkad33 wrote: post #558

There's no skill in using AI. I spent 3 hours trying to build something like a table visualiser that creates a visualization of SQL schema relationship. I wrote simple prompts, tailored them using LLMs and fed them back into another LLM. Went on about 2 hours iterating on outputs until it looked like what I want. Result? It produces an output. The outputs worked well for most part but the results were variable. The a…

You say that there's no skill in using AI, and then go on to explain how you used AI in an unskilled way to produce something that neither worked correctly nor taught you anything.

It strikes me that if you developed your skill set around using AI more effectively, you could have both developed a deep understanding and gotten what you wanted, and done it in less time and at higher quality than you could have done solo.

That said, the fact that you can use AI in an unskilled way to produce something kinda cool... is itself kinda cool! It means there's an on-ramp to using AI! People with no skills can get started, same day, and make stuff. And over time, can learn to make even better stuff! That's pretty cool to me.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#560

Post by harel » Mon, Jan 12, 2026, 2:31 AM UTC

nephihaha wrote: post #556

harel wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think UBI will be enough. All existing debt needs to be erased as well. Otherwise, UBI means nothing if it all goes to repay old debt. If UBI is less than my mortgage, bills and other loan repayments, what good is it?

Debt is a major problem for sure, and a cornerstone of our economic system. There should have been mandatory debt protection during that lockdown but there wasn't. UBI potentially leads to inflation. If everyone has X amount of income then rents and prices go up accordingly. Taxation is totally unfair. 20% of most of what we buy here is going into government coffers, raising our cost of living. We get less and less i…

I assume you're referring to VAT, and in the UK? It feels like they let us keep 20% of what we make these days... Don't get me started on poverty traps. The realisation and reality of all of this has recently hit me like a ton of bricks.