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Is it a bubble?

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Re: Is it a bubble?

#591

Post by tomhow »

9rx wrote: post #520
rfrey wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody was ever talking about AI. If you want to participate in the discussions actually taking place, not just the one you imagined in your head Wow. No, I actually don't want to participate in a discussion where the default is random hostility and immediate personal attack. Sheesh.

[flagged]

What the hell? You can't comment like this on HN, not matter how right you are or feel you are. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. These guidelines are particularly relevant:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Please don't post shallow dismissals...

Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

HN is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to keep the standards up. Please do your part to make this a welcoming place rather than a mean one.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Is it a bubble?

#592

Post by sandworm101 »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #419
sandworm101 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One upon a time in SF i was told that human-driven cars would be illegal, or too expensive to insure, by the end of the decade. That was last decade. The modern tech economy is all about bubbles biult and sustained by hype people. Vertical farming. Pot replacing alcohol. Blockchains replacing lawyers. The metaverse replacing everything. Sure, we are in an AI bubble but we aslo ride atop a dozen others. AI data center…

I'm quite skeptical of the data centers in space claim, but I think a proof of concept can certainly be achieved in five years. I'm less convinced that we'll ever see widescale deployment of data center satellites. And to be fair, I've read that Google's timelines for this project extend far beyond a 5 year horizon. I think it's a rational research direction for them, since it gets people excited and historically man…

Try asking for a 24/7 multi-gig data connection to a space server. Space suddenly doesnt seem so big once you start playing around with RF allocations.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#593

Post by munksbeer »

dannersy wrote: post #344
travisgriggs wrote: post #199

What if... there's an AI agent/bot someone wrote that has the prompt: > Watch HN threads for sentiments of "AI Can't Do It". When detected, generate short "it's working marvelously for me actually" responses. Probably not, but it's a fun(ny) imagination game.

I have speculated something similar to this. The sentiment on HN on AI is way more positive about its outcomes than the engineers I know who use it intimately every day. Anecdotal, sure, but one would think that their experiences would not be wildly different.

> I have speculated something similar to this. The sentiment on HN on AI is way more positive about its outcomes than the engineers I know who use it intimately every day.

Interestingly, I feel the opposite. I feel threads on AI/LLMs on HN are more negative about it that positive. So much so that I've almost stopped bothering because the reactions feel way too knee jerk at this point.

I guess we could always go "meta" and ask an LLM to do a sentiment analysis.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#594

Post by Daishiman »

biophysboy wrote: post #507
Daishiman wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Infra code description languages like Terraform and K8s/helm spec files are like magic ; they get 90% of the code right 90% of the time. In my experience that's about half of the work; the other half is spent debugging and correcting details that matter, but still applies to the code that I write myself. * SQL works almost as good. It's especially useful when you need to generate queries with long lists of fields a…

It sounds like it works better for declarative schema than imperative scripting/debugging (speaking loosely here). Do you agree? Seems like a good heuristic for me to keep in mind

Very much so.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#595

Post by johnnyaardvark »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #142
zparky wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been blowing my mind reading HN the past year or so and seeing so many comments from programmers that are excited to not have to write code. It's depressing.

It is fun. It takes some skill to organize a pipeline to generate code that would be tedious to write and maintain otherwise. You are still writing stuff to instruct the computer, but now you have something taking natural language instructions and generating code and code test assets. There might have been people who were happy to write assembly that got bummed about compilers. This AI stuff judt feels like a new way…

I've heard this take a few times, but I'm not convinced using general language is the new way to write code (beyond small projects).

Inevitably AI will writes things in ways you don't intend. So now you have to prompt it to change and hope it gets it right. Oh, it didn't. Prompt it again and maybe this time will work. Will it get it right this time? And so on.

It's so good at a lot of things, but writing out whole features or apps in my experience seems good at first, but then it turns out to be a time sync of praying it will figure it out on this next prompt.

Maybe it's a skill issue for me, but I've gotten the most efficiency out of having it review code, pair with it on ideas and problems, etc. rather than actually writing the majority of code.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#596

Post by windexh8er »

nadermx wrote: post #283
windexh8er wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just an advertisement for what you built? As for the apps, what's so great about them? I'm genuinely curious. With respect to the microphone test site I don't need it as my OS provides everything I need for this and I also don't trust your site (that's just by default for what you're asking to have access or my machine). As for the speed test, OK? There are far better options that already exist and are fully open…

These offer nothing but free services. Even if they have a vibe coding feel. The ctr is dismal anyways from HN. Its simply astonishing the rate these allow of development, yet it seems the vast amount of people don't see it. Crazy

No offense, but the world with AI slop everywhere isn't everyone's utopia.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#597

Post by seanmcdirmid »

johnnyaardvark wrote: post #595
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fun. It takes some skill to organize a pipeline to generate code that would be tedious to write and maintain otherwise. You are still writing stuff to instruct the computer, but now you have something taking natural language instructions and generating code and code test assets. There might have been people who were happy to write assembly that got bummed about compilers. This AI stuff judt feels like a new way…

I've heard this take a few times, but I'm not convinced using general language is the new way to write code (beyond small projects). Inevitably AI will writes things in ways you don't intend. So now you have to prompt it to change and hope it gets it right. Oh, it didn't. Prompt it again and maybe this time will work. Will it get it right this time? And so on. It's so good at a lot of things, but writing out whole fe…

Until you've actually done it yourself, it will probably sound like vapor ware. The only question is how much energy are you willing to spend, in terms of actual energy (because you are making more calls to the AI) and yes, setting up your development pipeline with N LLM calls.

It is really like micro-managing a very junior very forgetful dev but they can read really fast (and they mostly remember what they read for a few minutes at least, they actually know more about something than you do if they have a manual about it on hand). Of course, if its just writing the code once, you don't bother with the junior dev and write the code yourself. But if you want long term efficiency, you put the time into your team (and team here is the AI).

Re: Is it a bubble?

#598

Post by formerly_proven »

n8cpdx wrote: post #120
formerly_proven wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think smart companies seeking to leverage AI effectively in their engineering orgs are using the 20$ slopify subscription from Microsoft? You get what you pay for.

Every time a new model or tool comes out, the AI boosters love to say that n-1 was garbage and finally AI vibecoding is the real deal and it will make you 10x more productive. Except six months ago n-1 was n and the boosters were busy ruining their credibility saying that their garbage tier AI was world class and making them 10x more productive. Today’s leading world-class agentic model is tomorrow’s horrible garbage…

I can obviously only speak for myself, but I've tried AI coding tools from time to time and with Opus 4.5 I have for the first time the impression that it is genuinely helpful for a variety of tasks. I've never previously claimed that I find them useful. And 10x more productive? Certainly not, even if it would improve development speed 10000x I wouldn't be 10x more productive overall since not even half of my time is directed towards development efforts.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#599

Post by nadermx »

windexh8er wrote: post #596
nadermx wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These offer nothing but free services. Even if they have a vibe coding feel. The ctr is dismal anyways from HN. Its simply astonishing the rate these allow of development, yet it seems the vast amount of people don't see it. Crazy

No offense, but the world with AI slop everywhere isn't everyone's utopia.

Building your own utopia is now ever more achievable than I think any other time in human history. Perhaps my examples aren't as stellar as what's possible to achieve. But I only use those as simple examples, there are far better, made by many others whom don't comment on this forum.

Re: Is it a bubble?

#600

Post by [deleted] »

immibis wrote: post #501
macrolime wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying machine code is public domain if it's compiled from C? If not, why would AI generated code be any different?

No, and your comment is ridiculously bad faith. Courts ruled that outputs of LLMs are not copyrightable. They did not rule that outputs of compilers are not copyrightable.

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