Fuck it, make it anyway • Hacker News Board

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#561

Post by Zizizizz » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:08 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #381

Zizizizz wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a failure of imagination to me (I hope you're right). It doesn't have to be the CTO, it can be anyone who will sit there for the cheapest cost to read output while assuming the risk of it all working until they retire. Sounds glorious

> assuming the risk of it all scapegoating isn't really legally viable. corps who outsource their development haven't outsourced their liability.

Sorry I meant ownership of it working when an alert goes off in production and having to fix it, not legal liability. I should have been more clear.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#562

Post by Zizizizz » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:15 PM UTC

Chris2048 wrote: post #371

Zizizizz wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an element of truth to what you're saying in respect to the feelings of frustration that people who are non-technical can compete with those who have spent decades of time and effort to learning the crafts of their trade. What I also think they are thinking (because I am one of them) is not that we can produce value easier and quicker. It's that there's a devaluing of education and expertise to the po…

> just copy your processes, get rid of you because they have their own ideas Implies a process requiring no expert knowledge or understanding. That doesn't seem to match common experience of professional agentic development. You are describing vibe coding, which is without human design, review or direction. Models are getting better at this, but it's not yet clear how practical they will be. They often fail on uncomm…

I agree with you, it's the same experience I've had. But I've seen completely nontechnical people build some sites and become convinced themselves, and if those people control the purse then it doesn't matter as much what devs think the reality of agentic dev is. (Until they get burned enough times).

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#563

Post by properbrew » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #262

socalgal2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just see it as tool. Used to be you had to calculate things by hand on paper. Then we got calculators, then spreadsheets. Complaining that by hand was better seems line nonsense. I'm old enough to have taken typing lessons in high school on typewriters with real ink and needed to use white-out to fix things and if there are too many mistakes having to start over from scratch. I don't want to go back. Construction w…

If we strip away all the layers of onion, we are not left with a Platonic ideal onion, we're left with nothing. Removing every chore, task, craft, friction from life does not leave an ideal perfect life, it leaves nothing. Some people are feeling closer to that nothing than others. A human who liked caring for horses, feeding them, brushing them, comforting them during thunderstorms, blanketing them in cold weather,…

I can see the analogy, but fundementally that human liked caring for animals, they didn't like transporting the goods as effectively as possible, if they did then sitting in a box optimising delivery time would make them feel useful and respected.

The human in your analogy would be better off working with animals on a farm, or vet practice, where the technological advances that deliver better care to animals would make them feel even more fulfilled.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#564

Post by Zizizizz » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

MachineMan wrote: post #501

Zizizizz wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an element of truth to what you're saying in respect to the feelings of frustration that people who are non-technical can compete with those who have spent decades of time and effort to learning the crafts of their trade. What I also think they are thinking (because I am one of them) is not that we can produce value easier and quicker. It's that there's a devaluing of education and expertise to the po…

What if engineers push out all non-engineer CXOs precisely because of what you are saying. Hypothetically, if you replace all employees with engineers (so all the non-engineering roles) and allow them to optimize processes using LLMs, isn’t this like lean/six sigma on crack?

Yep, that could happen as well. I suspect some engineers would be surprised how much work, time and effort it takes to build the relationships to market and sell to (along with all the other roles).

I hope that everyone agrees to collectively recognise we all need to still do some things together and the knowledge in our heads is still much more important.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#565

Post by switchbak » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 11:19 PM UTC

amlib wrote: post #548

adar2378 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah exactly! Either adapt/innovate or do something else.

Hard to do when adapting/innovating means essentially joining the Borg. People have a million analogies to what is happening with AI right now but they often fail to see how unprecedented it is. Is history really just repeating? Are we in a cycle? Or is this just a paperclip optimizer?

I dunno, I felt less human when I had to take days to do large scale menial refactors. I felt more like a minion or borg member back then.

Now I feel like I’m middle management aboard a star destroyer. Lateral move?

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#566

Post by dofm » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 11:21 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #515

dofm wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult territory because at some level asking people to meet a certain standard to have a stall at a craft fair is, essentially, "gatekeeping". But art sales are really the only gatekeeping there is in art, and it has to do with there being a literal gate to a limited space. (It's also usually not artists themselves doing the gatekeeping) People who are engaged in art really ask so little of other people who…

I always laugh at the people talking about AI "democratizing" the arts and "eliminating gatekeeping" when punk and stream of consciousness aesthetic and several other completely open, completely non-virtuoso paths to the arts exist. If only AI could be helping to improve art and media literacy.

Yeah, I mean my slice of the internet is full of video shorts of people using dead ballpoint pens/tetra paks/kitchen ingredients/Temu pasta makers, or silicone baking mats/budget acrylic paint/leaves/laser printer copies to make really cool, unique prints.

The idea that anything about contemporary art needs further democratisation is kind of insane; there is no art form out there that you cannot find someone more or less begging you to learn for next to nothing.

--

Speaking of AI and art literacy: one of the experiments I have been doing is asking local LLMs (Gemma 4 12B specifically) to look at a set of my own photos, describe them, draw parallels, and recommend other photographers. At one point it recommended to me (without any hints except my photos, which are not in any sense reproductions) that I look at the work of a fairly niche, early photographer who actually is my long term favourite; it also recommended someone contemporary whose name had only come up for me once before who is really fascinating.

So I don't discount that AI might have some value in that art history context. I think, analytically, these tools potentially have something to offer on this point, because after all, my influences (conscious and subconscious) are in the training set, and so are those artists' influences. AI ought to be good at revealing influences.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#567

Post by TacticalCoder » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 11:27 PM UTC

imdsm wrote: post #72

MachineMan wrote: post #10

In general creators must do some honest introspection. Did you enjoy the crafts, or did you enjoy the compliments? Did you enjoy the difficult puzzles or the identity derived from a career that gives you the reputation and perceived value of someone who can do a thing most people can’t? Did you enjoy the code itself or the accomplishment of seeing your ideas brought to life? Who remains when the thing you do no longe…

This is eery to read, as I've been thinking something very similar recently whilst discussing gen AI with a close friend who works in tech but isn't a developer, who now uses AI to build everything he wished he could. Meanwhile I've seen other people, colleagues, friends, who are programmers get incredibly frustrated about AI and it's almost entirely that it lets non-developers make things. The feeling I get is that…

> The ego of being able to do things they made them seem like magicians?

In the interest of fairness, if you want to go down that route, we should have a talk about the ego of those now making software they believe is quality and who have barely any users.

I'm very serious about this: there are many people now who believe they can code.

I'd say the closest thing to vibe-coders is vanity publishing: people who now have "published a book".

I'm using Linux, Emacs, LSP servers, VMs (and QEMU), etc. very heavily.

And how many vibe-coded apps am I using?

Zero.

Who's got a big ego? Those who worked on Linux, Emacs, QEMU, ffmpeg, etc. and whose work help millions of people, or those who vibe-coded some insecure app that has one user and who now consider themselves programmers?

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#568

Post by tom_alexander » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 11:31 PM UTC

someguynamedq wrote: post #426

bigmadshoe wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A point is coming very soon where coding agents are not tools but are just your replacement. If you prompt a coding agent to make you something then go have lunch, you didn't make anything, it did.

"You didn't build that house, your hammer did"

https://www.facebook.com/twonks/posts/great-job-/13130659843...

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#569

Post by rogerrogerr » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 11:53 PM UTC

DidntUseIt wrote: post #297

rogerrogerr wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> file sharing > LLMs It’s probably worth doing a very thorough audit of how you’re handling user-uploaded files, it’s full of non-obvious footguns.

I bet you don’t know the MIME type for MS Word doc off the top of your head. Do you? So why would I take your advice on this topic? I bet there are 1000 other things you don’t know about file uploads. The LLM does know, and if I think it looks weird I can research it manually. It’s called: Being of normal functioning intelligence And caring about the product and the work (and the money!)

I have no idea why you’re so mad.

Also, this is a forum where you’re somewhat likely to run into people who worked on Word at Microsoft. That seems like enough of an answer to your question.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#570

Post by mattgreenrocks » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 11:59 PM UTC

user43928 wrote: post #142

lelanthran wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter when you post it; some kid with a $200 claude sub (or cheaper) is going to clone it for far cheaper than you, and sell it for far cheaper than you. There's no friction to what you produced, so why do you think that you won't have 100s of clones, all cheaper? We're now in a market for lemons as far as software goes.

I spent hundreds of hours on this, so there is still some friction. If I told you the exact market and use case, I'd still have a decent head start, but indeed, someone without a job could invest more time than I do. People in a cheaper location can work for far cheaper than I can afford to. With head start I don't meant that the idea is so novel that I need to keep it a secret. However, I believe that if there is an…

Despair is a choice some people have made, and they want to drag others into it to justify their inaction. Take your best shot. Maybe it takes off, maybe it doesn't.

Either way, it's a hell of a lot better than being a replyguy.