HN user
This is a perfect example of where the real work and challenges are in software development.
AI makes it worse. This is where people will lose tons of productivity with AI and many people are completely clueless. It'll hit them like a ton of bricks one day.
I think they are good productivity tools in that they essentially shorten the research loop. Imagine having Google and stack overflow right inside your IDE. On top of that, imagine scaffolding/generators for a lot more "boilerplate" code.
If you look at them through that lens then they are less exhausting in my opinion, but I hear ya.
I feel the burn out too. It's because of all the hype and people out there (most of whom have no programming experience at all mind you) believing these tools can do something they cannot. Then everyone seems to intent on doing better here that they start trying to run multiple agents, etc. Ultimately this results in less productivity.
I'm going to be honest. At work, I've seen the team begin to build custom internal apps and dashboards that literally do the same thing as Jira and observability tools that we already pay for. It just happens to...OMG...put the data that used to be on two different browser tabs onto the same one! Woah! Amazing! It only took two weeks to build too! Jira is so cooked! Except. It's not. Because this little reporting app doesn't do anything and it has bugs to maintain. Oh right and it didn't go through the regular SDLC or follow any code review process so it's a violation of SOC 2. But you know what? They get a pat on the back.
This industry is as the kids like to say - cooked.
If I'm being completely honest, I don't think most AI influencers even know the difference between something that is deterministic vs. non-deterministic. The author here probably gives too much credit.
I agree it is a silly debate, but it's simply surprising to me that not enough people ask why. No one wants to think anymore, they just want to be told the answer. That's why there's a "debate" in the first place.
ActionScript, Emscripten, Dart, WebAssembly... All things that perform better and are often better to use than JavaScript (and TypeScript) and the dumb masses chose the crap we have now.
Let's face it. People benefit from complexity and poorly performing apps. Not just for the web, look at video game engines too.
When hardware gets faster and cheaper, people tend to say "meh" to quality and performance concerns. That part gets easier, but that's the slippery slope that introduces poor quality and complexity - especially when pressured top down by companies to go faster.
Basically the need for, forget about reward in, quality is completely removed.
So congratulations Internet. We have most web apps powered by a language spec dreamt up in a weekend. With patches on top of patches and abstraction on top of abstraction since.
It's been great job security of course... gatekeeping and all...but I don't know. I kinda hope AI does come and just replaces it all or something.
Man I wanted to use WebAssembly more. For Dart I made a Photoshop PSD to JPG converter that was super fast too. Much faster than any JavaScript image convert and resize was. Bummer.
No they wouldn't. They have tons of funding. They absolutely can and do absorb costs like this. Don't think anyone is ever gonna tell you precise numbers (and it also varies based on workload of course)...but this is literally the business model of AI providers.
They're goal (similar to Uber, DoorDash, Robin Hood, etc.) is to get mass adoption. Their business models only work at this kind of scale.
It's completely impossible to have consumers pay $20-60/mo and be a profitable business without mass adoption where some are not using it as much as others...and, perhaps more importantly, the masses put pressure on their employers to pay for their tooling. This is why pricing does not need to come down.
Quite literally I have engineers spending over $1,000/mo on Opus. That's the goal.
Yea, it costs more than that.
I wouldn't be so sure about the courts overturning it. This is yet another opportunity for this administration to test its power. Even if the courts do, it'll be very time consuming and expensive.
Unfortunately this is really bad for Anthropic. Given how quickly the other providers jumped on the opportunity, you can tell how fast things move here and ultimately that could mean the difference between survival in this industry.
I hope something changes, but it can get a lot worse. Individual developers signing up won't help Anthropic. If things get worse, you can rule out Anthropic in most enterprise situations. Supply chain risk means you can't even build software with the thing. Forget about using AI as part of the product, as a user facing feature - people won't be able to build with it as it's part of the supply chain.
They're gonna crucify them. They called the Trump administration dictators. Not good.
Should make one for skills. I'm curious how effective this ends up being though. The model does need to know something about the tools (or skills) after all.
Wait so like the constant high pitch squeal/hum is tinnitus? I just thought I was hearing electronics.
It is more challenging, but I feel like it also has fewer people looking for that. That whole "move fast and break things" phrase messed with too many people's heads. I don't think people appreciate this segment of a product's life cycle as much as they should. They're always looking for the quick solutions.
It should be making them more useful. They can ask it questions to learn! It's an amazing source of information. Far more convenient than Googling and reading. It's interactive Google, interactive custom tailored education. Insane.
It's impossible for them to stop if you list your email on there. They could make it harder of course. But if you put your email out there for a human to find, then a script or bot or also find it.
And yes of course they can also stop a specific spammer. But that spammer may pick up another account and email.
Happens all the time.
Well that makes me feel old. I remember making my first site on Geocities not long after.
You can build plenty with Google ai pro plan and Antigravity. Yea there's some limits that should be even higher, but you can still build stuff.
Meh, that's ok. Not using openclaw anyway. Doesn't sound useful to be frank.
3.0 pro is fantastic. Can't wait for 3.1. and no I'm not solely a user of Gemini, I also love Opus. I just end up using 3.0 pro more.
Exactly. I mean think about the programming languages used in aircraft and such. There's reasons. It all depends on what people are willing to tolerate.
They tier it. So you are limited until you pay more. So you can't just right away get the access you need.
There are. It's like healthcare, the healthy don't use it as much and pay for the sick.
I thought Anthropic would fall after OpenAI, but they just might be racing to the bottom faster here.
Oh no? Things we would never have to specify to a human? This is precisely how software gets made and how software ends up with bugs.
It's amazing how many things I saw over the years where I said the same exact thing; "but you shouldn't have to tell anyone that."
I mean some might say that's like joining a sinking ship. Of course one man's trash is another man's treasure. To each their own.
Hiring in tech has been broken for many many years at this point. There's so much noise and only more noise coming now with AI. To be completely honest it's entire random from my end when hiring. We can't review every application that comes in. It's just impossible. We do weed out some of the spam of course and do get to real people that actually fit the requirements, but there's so many other talented people who would easily fit the role that simple get buried under applications. It's depressing from all sides here. No one should think that they aren't any good or did something wrong or didn't network enough... because the unfortunate truth is that getting a job in tech is a lottery. Something many don't want to admit.
The equipment definitely makes a difference but you're right about diminishing returns. In fact, at a certain point it's zero returns and all gimmick unfortunately.
That said, you don't need to break the bank for good stuff and it does make a huge difference. There's also a lot of marketing out there for bad equipment. Apple air pods and beats headphones and more.
This is essentially the death of open-source software.
I understand that projects will probably get floods of PRs and such given how easy it is to do stuff with AI now... And maybe it's AI that is to blame for it all. That's fair.
But no good will come of this strategy. I think it's even possible that we will see a massive stall in innovation now.
I agree with others, it's perfectly fine for a project to stop being open source.
That said, we also can't blame people for using open source without paying or donating.
I can absolutely take issue with people demanding things of open source projects. They can contribute or pay if they want to be demanding around bug fixes and support.
I've been a big proponent of open source for many years - learning from, contributing to, maintaining, sharing my own projects for free as open-source. I don't expect anything in return.
In fact, open-source projects benefit from contributors. So to me it's a bit incompatible with taking money. Money for what? For who? If it supports the project I'm ok with that, but I've also seen it line the pockets of original authors. I've seen original authors then turn other people's contributions through hard work into a business.
There is a very line between a funded community project and getting free labor for a business.
I take serious issue with open source projects magically one day turning into a business build on the backs of others for free. Not saying that about minIO or any other project. I'm just saying that happens.
Woah, really? I didn't know backup cameras were legally required now. Or have been. That's awesome.
Yea yea, that's a cool story, but can you make it cheaper maybe?
Yes. Because there's not enough compute. Most providers do this.