delbronski

Wasn’t it just a few months ago that a big tech CEO used his powers to gain access to all the US government data he wanted? Did you forget that already?

Did you see any clips from Trumps inauguration? Weren’t the CEOs of these big tech companies sitting right behind him?

Shall we even talk about Palantir?

I think it’s pretty obvious what the power of these companies are. You have to have your head pretty deep in the tech hole to think this is just about fair ec2 pricing. What I’d do to have that kind of ignorance again.

Barf . Just billionaires with crappy ideologies, and the will to shove those ideologies down everyone’s throat with their power and money.

Just stick to tech. Seriously. Make your tech, make your money, and shut up. You are not “representing” the people. You are so far out of touch. Silicon Valley needs to stay out of government/politics. Nobody wants to live in the crazy pipe dreams of some tech billionaires.

I think we, as engineers, are a bit stuck on what “software” has traditionally been. We think of systems that we carefully build, maintain, and update. Deterministic systems for interacting with computers. I think these “traditional” systems will still be around. But AI has already changed the way users interact with computers. This new interaction will give rise to another type of software. A more disposable type of software.

I believe right now we are still in the phase of “how can AI help engineers write better software”, but are slowly shifting to “how can engineers help AI write better software.” This will bring in a new herd of engineers with completely different views on what software is, and how to best go about building computer interactions.

I think so. From my experience Claude/codex tooling really excels at vibe coding the whole thing. You give it a folder and just say: now make it do this. And you don’t really care for the code.

Junie tooling excels when you are more involved. Like, look in these two files, add this specific functionality, in this specific way. Junie is usually a lot faster and to the point. Very simple tooling , it just works for this workflow. But it breaks for the “code the whole thing for me” workflow.

I’ve been using Gemini with Junie (jetbrains attempt at Claude code). While Junie is nowhere near as good as Claude Code, it is way ahead of the current Google tooling. I get quite good consistent results for pretty cheap with this combo.

Yes. A skill I have not mastered in 20 years. And I’ve yet to meet a person who has. If you are out here writing perfectly looking code 100% of the time that everyone else including you can perfectly understand a year later, then hats off to you.

But in my long career even the smartest most experienced software engineers I’ve met m write their share of crazy abstractions from hell.

You are right about the learning part. But I’ve been at this for 20 years. Even the best, most pristine and organizad code I’ve seen has not been “clear”. The average LLM code today is a lot more clear than the average developer code.

So we’ve already grown nostalgic for the old days… skimming through an alien looking codebase, scratching your head trying to figure what crazy abstraction the last person who touched this code had in mind. Oh shit it was me? That made so much more sense back then… but it’s been 6 hours and I can’t figure out why this does not work anymore. So you read some docs but they are poorly written. So you find something on Google and try to hack that into your solution. But nope, now more stuff broke. There goes your day.

Nah dude, that roulette wheel is 100% rigged. From top to bottom. No doubt about that. If you think they are playing fair you are either brand new to this industry, or a masochist.

Ever since this change they announced:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s4idaq/update_on...

It’s been unusable for me as my daily coding agent. I run out of credits in the pro account in an hour or so. Before that I had never reached the session limit. Switched back to Junie with Gemini/chatgpt.

Interesting way to waste energy.

What about having agents compete at finding exploits? Or maybe picking an open source project and have agents compete at fixing bugs for it? Or just something more… useful. Seems like the current games are a bit lame, but the concept could be something.

Money. You can break any rule with money.

Ha! Nice April Fools joke. Nothing will succeed WordPress. Not even AGI. Specially not something with the name EmDash. Good one Cloudflare.

Garbage software that is slow as a dog has been winning. While we’ve been obsessing over our craft and arguing about what makes software beautiful, slow crappy software has taken over the world.

Quality of code is just not that important of a concept anymore for the average web developer building some saas tool. React code was always crap anyways. Unless you are building critical systems like software that powers a plane or medical equipment, then code quality just doesn’t really matter so much in the age of AI. That may be a hard pill to swallow for some.

Yes! We tried leaving tech unregulated and it did not work. We got huge monopolies screwing consumers at every turn. Time to try something new.

Oh yeah, no you are right. Sorry for focusing on that little part of space and time where I and everyone I know and love is alive and being affected by our decisions. How dumb of me!

And I’m shocked that anyone into tech can be so blind to the adverse effects the current tech industry is having on our world and our society.

We owe it to the world, as the experts, to be critical. The march of automation and technology has made the world a better place in some ways. I sure love modern medicine, but those drones flying over Ukraine and Russia sure don’t seem like they are making the world a better place. Nuclear bombs are not making the work a better place. Misinformation in social media is not making the world a better place.

Any belief you drink blindly will eventually find a way to harm you.

AI is starting to look like a net negative for humanity. I remember the early days of OpenAI. I was super excited about it. There was a new space to uncover and learn about. I was hopeful.

Now I have this love/hate relationship with it. Claude Code is amazing. I use it everyday because it makes me so much more efficient at my job. But I also know that by using it I’m contributing to making my job redundant one day.

At the same time I see how much resources we are wasting on AI. And to what end? Does anybody really buy the BS that this will all make the world a better place one day? So many people we could shelter and feed, but instead we are spending it on trying to make your computer check and answer your emails for you. At what point do we just look up and ask… what is the damn purpose of all of this? I guess money.

Thanks, I am known for bold predictions. I also predict the US and Iran war will end.

I hope you are right. I’ve been in this industry 20 years… the passionate developer or small team with the awesome software wins a few times, but 99% of the time it’s the shitty software with a great marketing and sales team that wins.

My prediction is that OpenClaw will eventually die. But it has provided a small glimpse of the future.The way the average consumers interact with computers will drastically change.

I can envision someone sitting in a park bench with a small set of earphones planning a family trip with their AI. They get home and see the details of it on their fridge. They check with their partner, and then just tell the AI to book it. And it all works.

I probably won’t use it and hate it. I’ll stick to my old ways of booking the trip with my fingers. But those born into it will look at me crazy.

I agree with you. Personally I hate it. I was trying to figure out the specs of this laptop because my sister asked me if she should buy it. I had to do a lot of clicking.

But this site got my sister excited about buying the laptop. The stupid animations worked. And I am sure if this was presented to her as a simple html page with a white background and some text it just would not have had the same effect.

Like it or not, most websites are just ads. Interactive billboards. They are not there to present data to you in the best way possible.

I get your preferences, and I am tempted to agree with you because there is a lot to hate about Apple.

But… this website is an ad. It’s not a product spec sheet. It’s not meant for you. It’s meant for people who don’t know a lot about computers or the web, and it’s meant to make them feel something about the product. Its goal is not to present data clearly. And as much as we may hate it, it does a brilliant job at what it’s trying to do. I think dismissing that because you are too deep into the “right way to make websites cult” is so shortsighted.

Ah yes, taste. That thing that is definitely NOT subjective, and NOT influenced by cultural norms and personal preferences rather than universal standards.

Yes you are right, guess you guys do have better “web taste”.

Why would anyone prefer pics of hipster drinking coffee over plain text?

But do they really suck to use so badly? Like for real? The examples that have been listed in the comments (Apple and Claude sites) look totally fine to me. People here are talking about them like they are the worse websites ever.

Why do web animations get so much hate with the HN crowd?

I think a website is similar to a painting. Some will make you dizzy by just looking at them, and others will be a minimalist dream.

Don’t hate me HN, but I say keep messing with the scroll bar, keep making annoying blinking banners, have your way with scroll fade.

Don’t listen to these web dev veterans, they are just like snobby movie critics!

Some advice:

Drop the login for now. You’ll get more initial feedback that way. Add it back later if you get some traction.

Show some examples. You know the saying pictures speak louder than words. Show a few examples of how this looks on the landing page.

My favorite part of programming is thinking about the whole system before I write a single line of code. How will my data be structured? What does the UI look like? How do I structure the project? What tools do I use? What do I need to take out to make this simpler? Etc.

I think hard about this with a notebook and a pencil and a coffee. And I spend weeks and sometimes months thinking about this. I go deep. And then the actual coding is just the grunt work. I don’t hate it but I don’t love it. I couldn’t care less what language is written in as long as it accomplishes my goal. So AI works great for me in this step.

I think you can still use AI and think deeply. It just depends on your mindset and how you use it.

Most software engineers were not “crafting” before AI. They were writing sloppy code for the sake of profit, getting a pay check, and going home. Which is why AI also outputs the same crappy code.

Rumor has it there were a few elite crafters among the lot. Software wizards who pondered about systems and architecture as they had a $10 espresso macchiato.

Thanks! I’ll look into this.