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Comments (586)

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  embedding-shape
  > 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 like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer, and for them, I understand LLMs remove the fun part. For me, I initially got into programming because I wanted to ruin other people's websites, then I figured out I needed to know how to build websites first, then I found it more fun to create and share what I've done with others, and they tell me what they think of it. That's my "fire". But I've met so many people who doesn't care an iota about sharing what they built with others, it matters nothing to them.I guess the conclusion is, not all programmers program for the same reason, for some of us, LLMs helps a lot, and makes things even more fun. For others, LLMs remove the core part of what makes programming fun for them. Hence we get this constant back and forth of "Can't believe others can work like this!" vs "I can't believe others aren't working like this!", but both sides seems to completely miss the other side.
• burgerone
  There's this infinite war between the two opposing sides. "It's going to change programming forever" vs "Why not just use your brain". I much prefer option two for all the good reasons. Saying that AI is awesome doesn't actually adress all its issues.
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  systemf_omega
  What I don't understand about this whole "get on board the AI train or get left behind" narrative, what advantage does an early adopter have for AI tools?The way I see it, I can just start using AI once they get good enough for my type of work. Until then I'm continuing to learn instead of letting my brain atrophy.
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  cmiles8
  The “anti-AU hype” phrase oversimplifies what’s playing out at the moment. On the tech side, while things are a bit rough around the edges still the tech is very useful and isn’t going away. I honestly don’t see much disagreement there.The concern mostly comes from the business side… that for all the usefulness on the tech there is no clearly viable path that financially supports everything that’s going on. It’s a nice set of useful features but without products with sufficient revenue flowing in to pay for it all.That paints a picture of the tech sticking around but a general implosion of the startups and business models betting on making all this work.The later isn’t really “anti-AI hype” but more folks just calling out the reality that there’s not a lot of evidence and data to support the amount of money invested and committed. And if you’ve been around the tech and business scene a while you’ve seen that movie before and know what comes next.In 5 years time I expect to be using AI more than I do now. I also expect most of the AI companies and startups won’t exist anymore.
• remix2000
  Honestly, coding with a chatbot's "help" just slows me down. Also the progress in chatbot space is minimal (at least it feels like that from an end user perspective), essentially nonexistent since like 2024. I only use them cause all search engines are broken on purpose now. It's truly terrible times we live in, but not because the robots could replace us, rather because nontechnical managers are detached from reality as they always were and want us to believe that.
• darepublic
  In my current work project I am consulting llm frequently as a type of coding search engine. I also use it to rubber duck my designs. Most of the coding was done myself though. But even that feels perhaps quaint and I feel like it may be wasting time
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  adityaathalye
  Don't fall into the "Look ma, no hands" hype.Antirez + LLM + CFO = Billion Dollar Redis company, quite plausibly./However/ ...As for the delta provided by an LLM to Antirez, outside of Redis (and outside of any problem space he is already intimately familiar with), an Apples to Apples comparison would be he trying this on an equally complex codebase he has no idea about. I'll bet... what Antirez can do with Redis and LLMs (certainly useful, huge Quality of Life improvement to Antirez), he cannot even begin to do with (say) Postgres.The only way to get there with (say) Postgres, would be to /know/ Postgres. And pretty much everyone, no matter how good, cannot get there with code-reading alone. With software at least, we need to develop a mental model of the thing by futzing about with the thing in deeply meaningful ways.And most of us day-job grunts are in the latter spot... working in some grimy legacy multi-hundred-thousand line code-mine, full of NPM vulns, schelpping code over the wall to QA (assuming there is even a QA), and basically developing against live customers --- "learn by shipping", as they say.I do think LLMs are wildly interesting technology, however they are poor utility for non-domain-experts. If organisations want to profit from the fully-loaded cost of LLM technology, they better also invest heavily in staff training and development.
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  edg5000
  > state of the art LLMs are able to complete large subtasks or medium size projects alone, almost unassisted, given a good set of hints about what the end result should beNo. I agree with the author, but it's hyperbolic of him to phrase it like this. If you have solid domain knowledge, you'll steer the model with detailed specs. It will carry those out competently and multiply your productivity. However, the quality of the output still reflects your state of knowledge. It just provides leverage. Given the best tractors, a good farmer will have much better yields than a shit one. Without good direction, even Opus 4.5 tends to create massive code repetion. Easy to avoid if you know what you are doing, albeit in a refactor pass.
• etamponi
  > Hours instead of weeks.And then goes on describing two things for which I bet almost anyone with enough knowledge of C and Redis could implement a POC in... Guess what? Hours.At this point I am literally speechless, if even Antirez falls for this "you get so quick!!!" hype.You get _some_ speed up _for things you could anyway implement_. You get past the "blank screen block" which prevents you from starting some project.These are great useful things that AI does for you!Shaving off _weeks_ of work? Let's come back in a couple of month when he'll have to rewrite everything that AI has written so well. Or, that code would just die away (which is another great use case for AI: throw away code).People still don't understand that writing code is a way to understand something? Clearly you don't need to write code for a domain you already understand, or that you literally created.What leaves me sad is that this time it is _Antirez_ that writes such things.I have to be honest: it makes me doubt of my position, and I'll constantly reevaluate it. But man. I hope it's just a hype post for an AI product he'll release tomorrow.
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  bluGill
  I'm trying not to fall for it, but when I try ai to write code it fails more often than not - at least for me. some people claim it does everything but I keep finding major problems. Even when it writes something that works often I can't explain that in 2026 we should be using smart pointers (C++) or what ever the modern thing
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  NitpickLawyer
  > Whatever you believe about what the Right Thing should be, you can't control it by refusing what is happening right now. Skipping AI is not going to help you or your career. Think about it. Test these new tools, with care, with weeks of work, not in a five minutes test where you can just reinforce your own beliefs.This is the advice I've been giving my friends and coworkers as well for a while now. Forget the hype, just take time to test them from time to time. See where it's at. And "prepare" for what's to come, as best you can.Another thing to consider. If you casually look into it by just reading about it, be aware that almost everything you read in "mainstream" places has been wrong in 2025. The people covering this, writing about this, producing content on this have different goals in this era. They need hits, likes, shares and reach. They don't get that with accurate reporting. And, sadly, negativity sells. It is what it is.THe only way to get an accurate picture is to try them yourself. The earlier you do that, the better you'll be. And a note on signals: right now, a "positive" signal is more valuable for you than many "negative" ones. Read those and try to understand the what, if not the how. "I did this with cc" is much more valuable today than "x still doesn't do y reliably".
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  phtrivier
  How would we measure the effects of AI coding tool taking over manual coding ? Would we see an increase in the number of GitHub projects ? In the number of stars (given the ai is so good) ? In the number of start up ipos (surely if all your engineers are 1000x engineers thanks to Claude code, we'll have plenty of googles and Amazons to invest in) ? In the price of software (if I can just vibe code everything, than a 10$ fully compatible replacement for MS Windows is just a few months away, right ?) In the the numbers of app published in the stores ?
• kiriakosv
  AI tools in their current form or another will definitely change software engineering, I personally think for the bestHowever I can’t help but notice some things that look weird/amusing:- The exact time that many programmers were enlightened about the AI capabilities and the frequency of their posts.- The uniform language they use in these posts. Grandiose adjectives, standard phrases like ‘it seems to me’- And more importantly the sense of urgency and FOMO they emit. This is particularly weird for two reasons. First is that if the past has shown something regarding technology is that open source always catches up. But this is not the case yet. Second, if the premise is that we re just the in beginning all these ceremonial flows will be obsolete.Do not get me wrong, as of today these are all valid ways to work with AI and in many domains they increase the productivity. But I really don’t get the sense of urgency.
• chrz
  > How do I feel, about all the code I wrote that was ingested by LLMs? I feel great to be part of that, because I see this as a continuation of what I tried to do all my life: democratizing code, systems, knowledge. LLMs are going to help us to write better software, faster, and will allow small teams to have a chance to compete with bigger companies.You might feel great, thats fine, but I dont. And software quality is going down, I wouldn't agree that LLMs will help write better software
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  ironman1478
  I'm not sure what to make of these technologies. I read about people doing all these things with them and it sounds impressive. Then when I use it, it feels like the tool produces junior level code unless I babysit it, then it really can produce what I want.If I have to do all this babysitting, is it really saving me anything other than typing the code? It hasn't felt like it yet and if anything it's scary because I need to always read the code to make sure it's valid, and reading code is harder than writing it.
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  wasmainiac
  These personal blogs are starting to feel like Linkdin Lunatic posts, kinda similar. to the optimised floor sweeping blog, “I am excited to provide shareholder value, at minimum wage”
• golly_ned
  As long as I'm not reviewing PRs with thousands of lines net new that weren't even read by their PR submitter, I'm fine with anything. The software design I've seen from AI code agent using peers has been dreadful.I think for some who are excited about AI programming, they're happy they can build a lot more things. I think for others, they're excited they can build the same amount of things, but with a lot less thinking. The agent and their code reviewers can do the thinking for them.
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  bob1029
  > Test these new tools, with care, with weeks of work, not in a five minutes test where you can just reinforce your own beliefs. Find a way to multiply yourself, and if it does not work for you, try again every few months.I've been taking a proper whack at the tree every 6 months or so. This time it seems like it might actually fall over. Every prior attempt I could barely justify spending $10-20 in API credits before it was obvious I was wasting my time. I spent $80 on tokens last night and I'm still not convinced it won't work.Whether or not AI is morally acceptable is a debate I wish I had the luxury of engaging in. I don't think rejecting it would allow me to serve any good other than in my own mind. It's really easy to have certain views when you can afford to. Most of us don't have the privilege of rejecting the potential that this technology affords. We can complain about it but it won't change what our employers decide to do.Walk the game theory for 5 minutes. This is a game of musical chairs. We really wish it isn't. But it is. And we need to consider the implications of that. It might be better to join the "bad guys" if you actually want to help those around you. Perhaps even become the worst bad guy and beat the rest of them to a functional Death Star. Being unemployed is not a great position to be in if you wish to assist your allies. Big picture, you could fight AI downstream by capitalizing on it near term. No one is keeping score. You might be in your own head, but you are allowed to change that whenever you want.
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  keyle
  > The fun is still there, untouched.Well that's a way to put it. But not everyone enjoy the art only for the results.I personally love learning, and by letting AI drive forward and me following, I don't learn. To learn is to be human.So saying the fun is untouched is one-sided. Not everyone is in it for the same reasons.
• anon
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• agoodusername63
  I never stop being amused that LLMs have made HN realize that many programmers are programmers for paychecks. Not for passion
• xg15
  > However, this technology is far too important to be in the hands of a few companies.I worry less about the model access and more about the hardwire required to run those models (i.e. do inference).If a) the only way to compete in software development in the future is to outsource the entire implementation process to one of a few frontier models (Chinese, US or otherwise)and b) only a few companies worldwide have the GPU power to run inference with those models in a reasonable timethen don't we already have a massive amount of centralization?That is also something I keep wondering with agentic coding - being able to realize your epic fantasy hobby project you've on and off been thinking about for the last years in a couple of afternoons is absolutely amazing. But if you do the same with work projects, how do you solve the data protection issues? Will we all now just hand our entire production codebases to OpenAI or Anthropic etc and hope their pinky promises hold?Or will there be a race for medium-sized companies to have their own GPU datacentets, not for production but solely for internal development and code generation?
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  kace91
  >Yes, maybe you think that you worked so hard to learn coding, and now machines are doing it for you. But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. And now you can build more and better, if you find your way to use AI effectively. The fun is still there, untouched.I wonder if I’m the odd one out or if this is a common sentiment: I don’t give a shit about building, frankly.I like programming as a puzzle and the ability to understand a complex system. “Look at all the things I created in a weekend” sounds to me like “look at all the weight I moved by bringing a forklift to the gym!”. Even ignoring the part that there is barely a “you” in this success, there is not really any interest at all for me in the output itself.This point is completely orthogonal to the fact that we still need to get paid to live, and in that regard I'll do what pays the bills, but I’m surprised by the amount of programmers that are completely happy with doing away with the programming part.
• eeixlk
  If you dont call it AI and see it as a natural language search engine result merger it's a bit easier to understand. Like a search engine, it's clunky so you have to know how to use it to get any useful results. Sometimes it appears magical or clever but it's just analyzing billions of text patterns. You can use this search merger to generate text in various forms quickly, and request new generated text. But it doesn't have taste, comprehension, problem solving, vision, or wisdom. However it can steal your data and your work and include it in it's search engine.
• robot-wrangler
  Let's maybe avoid all the hype, whether it is for or against, and just have thoughtful and measured stances on things? Fairly high points for that on this piece, despite the title. It has the obligatory remark that manually writing code is pointless now but also the obligatory caveat that it depends on the kind of code you're writing.
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  nephihaha
  Universal Basic Income is not the panacea it's claimed to be.
• 28ahsgT7
  It is somewhat amusing that the pro-LLM faction increasingly co-opts their opponents' arguments—now they are turning AI-hype into anti-AI hype.They did the same with Upton Sinclair's quote, which is now used against any worker who dares to hope for salary.There is not much creativity in the pro-LLM faction, which is guided by monetary interests and does not mind to burn its social capital in exchange for loss of credibility and money.
• yndoendo
  I want to know if any content has been made using AI or not.There really should be a label on the product to let the consumer know. This should be similar to Norway that requires disclosure of retouched images. No other way can I think of to help body image issues arising from pictorial people and how they never can being in real life.
• mwkaufma
  "Nah uh I'm not falling for hype _you're_ falling for hype."
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  ChrisMarshallNY
  I generally have a lot of respect for this guy. He’s an excellent coder, and really cares about his craft. I can relate to him (except he’s been more successful than me, which is fine -he deserves it).Really, one of the first things he said, sums it up:> facts are facts, and AI is going to change programming forever.I have been using it in a very similar manner to how he describes his workflow, and it’s already greatly improved my velocity and quality.I also can relate to this comment:> I feel great to be part of that, because I see this as a continuation of what I tried to do all my life: democratizing code, systems, knowledge.
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  theturtletalks
  LLMs are breaking open-source monetization.Group 1 is untouched since they were writing code for the sake of writing and they have the reward of that altruism.Group 2 are those that needed their projects to bring in some revenue so they can continue writing open-source.Group 3 are companies that used open-source as a way to get market share from proprietary companies, using it more in a capitalistic way.Overtime, I think groups 2 and 3 will leave open-source and group 1 will make up most of the open-source contributors. It is up to you to decide if projects like Redis would be built today with the monetary incentives gone.
• sreekanth850
  People here generalise vibcoders into single category. I don’t write code line-by-line the traditional way, but I do understand architecture deeply. Recently I started using AI to write code. not by dumping random prompts and copy-pasting blindly, but inside VS Code, reviewing what it generates, understanding why it works, and knowing exactly where each feature lives and how it fits. I also work with a frontend developer (As i do backend only and not interested in building UI and css) to integrate things properly, and together we fix bugs and security issues. Every feature built with AI works flawlessly because it’s still being reviewed, tested, and owned by humans. If I have a good Idea, and use AI to code, without depending on a developer friction due to limited budget, why people think its Sin? Is the implication that if you don’t have VC money to hire a team of developers, you’re supposed to just lose? I saw the exact same sentiment when tools like Elementor started getting popular among business owners. Same arguments, same gatekeeping. The market didn’t care. It feels more like insecurity about losing an edge. And if the edge was I type code myself, that edge was always fragile. Edit: The biggest advantage is that you don’t lose anything in translation. There’s no gap between the idea in your head and what gets built.You don’t spend weeks explaining intent, edge cases, or what I really meant to a developer. You iterate 1:1 with the system and adjust immediately when something feels off.
• dbacar
  There are different opinions on this:https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-coding-degrades
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  falloutx
  Where is this Anti-AI hype? We are seeing 100x videos of Claude Code & Vibe Coding and then may be we get 1 or 2 people saying "Maybe we should be cautious"
• didip
  The paragraph that was started with this sentence:> However, this technology is far too important to be in the hands of a few companies.I wholeheartedly agree 1000%. Something needs to change this landscape in the US.Furthermore, the entire open source models being dominated by China is also problematic.
• zkmon
  So, by "AI", you mean programming AI. Generalizing it as "AI" and "anti-AI" is adding great confusion to the already dizzying level of hype.At it's core, AI has capability to extract structure/meaning from unstructured content and vice-versa. Computing systems and other machines required inputs with limited context. So far, it was a human's job to prepare that structure and context and provide it to the machines. That structure can be called as "program" or "form data" or "a sequence of steps or lever operations or button presses".Now the machines got this AI wrapper or adapter that enables them to extract the context and structure from the natural human-formatted or messy content.But all that works only if the input has the required amount of information and inherent structure to it. Try giving a prompt with jumbled up sequence of words. So it's still the human jobs to provide that input to the machine.
• elktown
  I wonder if being a literal AI sci-fi author, antirez acknowledges that there's possible bias and willingness to extrapolate here? That said, I respect his work immensely and I do put a lot of weight to his recommendations. But I'd really prefer the hype fog that's clouding signal [for me] to dissipate a bit - maybe economic realities will sort this out soon.There's also a short-termism aspect of AI generated code that's seemingly not addressed as much. Don't pee your pants in the winter to keep warm.
• bwfan123
  I am not sure why the OP is painting it as a "us-vs-them" - pro or anti-AI ? AI is a tool. Use it if it helps.I would draw an analogy here between building software and building a home.When building a home we have a user providing the requirements, the architect/structural engineer providing the blueprint to satisfy the reqs, the civil engineer overseeing the construction, and the mason laying the bricks. Some projects may have a project-manager coordinating these activities.Building software is similar in many aspects to building a structure. If developers think of themselves as a mason they are limiting their perspective. If AI can help lay the bricks use it ! If it can help with the blueprint or the design use it. It is a fantastic tool in the tool belt of the profession. I think of it as a power-tool and want to keep its batteries charged to use it at any time.
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  dzonga
  antirez gave us reddit - but somehow I think the part him and other smart folks who talk about A.I so much is they forget about agency | self-sufficiency.If A.I writes everything for you - cool, you can produce faster ? but is it really true ? if you're renting capacity ? what if costs go up, now you can't rent anymore - but you can't code anymore, the documentation is no longer there - coz mcp etc assumption that everything will be done by agents then what ?what about the people that work on messy 'Information Systems' - things like redis - impressive but it's closed loop software just like compilers -some smart guy back in the 80s - wrote it's always a people problem -
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  threethirtytwo
  > the more isolated, and the more textually representable, the better: system programming is particularly aptI’ve written complete GUIs in 3D on the front end. This GUI was non traditional. It allows you to playback, pause speed up, slow down and rewind a gps track like a movie. There is real time color changing and drawing of the track as the playback occurs.Using mapbox to do this straight would be to slow. I told the AI to optimize it by going straight into shader extensions for mapbox to optimize GPU code.Make no mistake. LLMs are incredible for things that are non systems based that require interaction with 3D and GUIs.
• Ekaros
  I think best hope against AI is copy right. That is AI generated software has none. Everyone is free to steal and resell it. And those who generated have zero rights to complain or take legal action.
• silexia
  AI has a significant risk of directly leading to the extinction of our species, according to leading AI researchers. We should be worried about a lot more than job losses.
• insane_dreamer
  The reason I am "anti-AI" is not because I think LLMs being bad at what they do, nor because I'm afraid they'll take my job. I use CC to accelerate my own work (it's improved by leaps and bounds though I still find I have to keep it on a short leash because it doesn't always think things through enough). It's also a great research tool (search on steroids). It's excellent at summarizing long documents, editing and proofreading, etc. I use it for all those things. It's useful.The reason I am anti-AI is because I believe it poses a net-negative to society overall. Not because it is inherently bad, but because of the way it is being infused into society by large corps (and eventually governments). Yes, it makes me, and other developers, more productive. And it can more quickly solve certain problems that were time consuming or laborious to solve. And it might lead to new and greater scientific and technological advances.But those gains do not outweigh all of the negatives: concentration of power and capital into an increasingly small group, the eventual loss of untold millions of jobs (with, as of yet, not even a shred of indication of what might be replace them), the loss of skills in the next generations who are delegating much of their critical thinking (or thinking period), to ChatGPT; the loss of trust in society now that any believable video can be easily generated; the concentration of power in the the control of information if everyone is getting their info from LLMs instead of the open internet (and ultimately, potentially the death of the open internet); the explosion in energy consumption by data centers which exacerbates rather than mitigates global warming; and plenty more.AI might allow us to find better technological solutions to world hunger, poverty, mental health, water shortages, climate change, and war. But none of those problems are technological problems; technology only plays a small part. And the really important part is being negatively exacerbated by the "AI arms race". That's why I, who was my whole life a technological optimist, am no longer hopeful for the future. I wish I was.
• anon
  undefined
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  galdauts
  I feel like the use of the term "anti-AI hype" is not really fully explored here. Even limiting myself to tech-related applications - I'm frankly sick of companies trying to shove half-baked "AI features" down my throat, and the enshittification of services that ensues. That has little to do with using LLMs as coding assistants, and yet I think it is still an essential part of the "anti-AI hype".
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  esperent
  > But I'm worried for the folks that will get fired. It is not clear what the dynamic at play will be: will companies try to have more people, and to build more?This is the crux. AI suddenly became good and society hasn't caught on yet. Programmers are a bit ahead of the curve here, being closer to the action of AI. But in a couple of years, if not already, all the other technical and office jobs will be equally affected. Translators, admin, marketing, scientists, writers of all sorts and on and on. Will we just produce more and retain a similar level of employment, or will AI be such a force multiplier that a significant number or even most of these jobs will be gone? Nobody knows yet.And yet, what I'm even more worried about for their society upending abilities, is robots. These are coming soon and they'll arrive with just as much suddeness and inertia as AI did.The robots will be as smart as the AI running them, so what happens when they're cheap and smart enough to replace humans in nearly all physical jobs?Nobody knows the answer to this. But in 5 years, or 10, we will find out.
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  dom96
  > As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now.I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen.Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.
• anon
  undefined
• anovikov
  I'm sure it will go in the worst way possible: demand for code will not expand at nearly the same rate in which coding productivity will increase, and vast majority of coders will become permanently jobless, the rest will become disposable cheap labor just due to overabundance of them.This is already happening.AI had an impact on simplest coding first, this is self-evident. So any impact it had, had to be on the quantity of software created, and only then on its quality and/or complexity. And mobile apps are/were a tedious job with a lot of scaffolding and a lot of "blanks to fill" to make them work and get accepted by stores. So first thing that had to skyrocket in numbers with the arrival of AI, had to be mobile apps.But the number of apps on Apple Store is essentially flat and rate of increase is barely distinguishable from the past years, +7% instead of +5%. Not even visible.Apparently the world doesn't need/can't make monetisable use of much more software than it already does. Demand wasn't quite satisfied say 5 years ago, but the gap wasn't huge. It is now covered many times over.Which means, most of us will probably never get another job/gig after the current one - and if it's over, it's over and not worth trying anymore - the scraps that are left of the market are not worth the effort.
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  kruuuder
  What happens if the bubble bursts - can we still use all the powerful models to create all this code? Aren't all the agents effectively using venture capital today? Is this sustainable?If I can run an agent on my machine, with no remote backend required, the problem is solved. But right now, aren't all developers throwing themselves into agentic software development betting that these services will always be available to them at a relatively low cost?
• richardjennings
  SOTA LLMs are now quite good at typing out code that passes tests. If you are able to instruct the creation of sufficient tests and understand the code generated structurally, there is a significant multiplier in productivity. I have found LLMs to be hugely useful in understanding codebases more quickly. Granted it may be necessary to get 2nd opinions and fact check what is stated, but there is a big door now open to anyone to educate themselves.I think there are some negative consequences to this; perhaps a new form of burn out. With the force multiplier and assisted learning utility comes a substantial increase in opportunity cost.
• expedition32
  There is too much money invested in AI. You can't trust anyone talking about it.
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  bakugo
  > LLMs are going to help us to write better softwareNo, I really don't think they will. Software has only been getting worse, and LLMs are accelerating the rate at which incompetent developers can pump out low quality code they don't understand and can't possibly improve.
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  JackSlateur
  "Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"AI is both a near-perfect propaganda machine and, in the programming front, a self-fulfilling prophecy: yes, AI will be better at coding than human. Mostly because humans are made worse by using AI.
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  vmaurin
  > facts are facts, and AI is going to change programming foreverShow me these "facts"
• anon
  undefined
• lofaszvanitt
  People are afraid, because while AI seemingly gobbles up programmer jobs, on the economic side there are no guardrails visible or planned whatsoever.
• honeybadger1
  I've found awesome use cases for quick prototyping. It saves me days when I can just describe the final step and iterate on it backwards to perfection and showcase an idea.
• oulipo2
  > Writing code is no longer needed for the most part.Said by someone who spent his career writing code, it lacks a bit of details... a more correct way to phrase it is: "if you're already an expert in good coding, now you can use these tools to skip most of code writing"LLMs today are mostly some kind of "fill-in-the-blanks automation". As a coder, you try to create constraints (define types for typechecking constraints, define tests for testing constraints, define the general ideas you want the LLM to code because you already know about the domain and how coding works), then you let the model "fill-in the blanks" and you regularly check that all tests pass, etc
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  Juliate
  > What is the social solution, then? Innovation can't be taken back after all.It definitely can.The innovation that was the open, social web of 20 years ago? still an option, but drowned between closed ad-fueled toxic gardens and drained by AI illegal copy bots.The innovation that was democracy? Purposely under attack in every single place it still exists today.Insulin at almost no cost (because it costs next to nothing to produce)? Out of the question for people that live under the regime of pharmaceutical corporations that are not reigned by government, by collective rules.So, a technology that has a dubious ROI over the energy and water and land consumed, incites illegal activities and suicides, and that is in the process of killing the consumer public IT market for the next 5 years if not more, because one unprofitable company without solid verifiable prospects managed to pass dubious orders with unproven money that lock memory components for unproven data centers... yes, it definitely can be taken back.
• artemonster
  I see AI effect as exact opposite, a turbo version of "lisp curse".
• anon
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• imiric
  This is the first time I hear sentiments against "AI" hype be referred to as hype itself. Yes, there are people ignoring this technology altogether, possibly to their own detriment, but at the stage where we are now it is perfectly reasonable to want to avoid the actual hype.What I would really urge people to avoid doing is listening to what any tech influencer has to say, including antirez. I really don't care what famous developers think about this technology, and it doesn't influence my own experience of it. People should try out whatever they're comfortable with, and make up their own opinions, instead of listening what anyone else has to say about it. This applies to anything, of course, but it's particularly important for the technology bubble we're currently in.It's unfortunate that some voices are louder than others in this parasocial web we've built. Those with larger loudspeakers should be conscious of this fact, and moderate their output responsibly. It starts by not telling people what to do.
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  BoredPositron
  We are 5 years in... it's fine to be sceptical. The model advancements are in the single digits now. It's not on us that they promised the world 3 years ago. It's fine and will be just fine for the next few years. A real breakthrough is at least another 5 years away and if it comes everything you do now will be obsolete. Nobody will need or care about the dude that Sloperatored Claude Code on release and that's the reality everyone who goes full AI evangelist needs to understand. You are just a stopgap. The knowledge you are accumulating now is just worthless transitional knowledge. There is no need for FOMO and there is nothing hard operating LLMs for coding and it will get easier by the day.
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  on_the_train
  Another one of these sickening pieces. Framing opposition to an expensive tech that doesn't work as "anti". I tried letting the absolutely newest models write c++ today again. Gpt 5.1 and opus 4.5. single function with two or less input parameters, a nice return value, doing simple geometry with the glm library. Yes the code worked. But I took as long fixing the weird parts as it would have taken me myself. And I still don't trust the result, because reviewing is so much harder than writing.There's still no point. Resharper and clang-tidy still have more value than all LLMs. It's not just a hype, it's a bloody cult, right besides those nft and church of COVID people.
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  senko
  The anti-AI hype, in the context of software development, seems to focus on a few things:> AI code is slop, therefore you shouldn't use itYou should learn how to responsibly use it as a tool, not a replacement for you. This can be done, people are doing it, people like Salvatore (antirez), Mitchell (of Terraform/Ghostty fame), Simon (swillison) and many others are publicly talking about it.> AI can't code XYZIt's not all-or-nothing. Use it where it works for you, don't use it where it doesn't. And btw, do check that you actually described the problem well. Slop-in, slop-out. Not sayin' this is always the case, but turns out it's the case surprisingly often. Just sayin'> AI will atrophy your skills, or prevent you from learning new ones, therefore you shouldn't use itAgain, you should know where and how to use it. Don't tune out while doing coding. Don't just skim the generated code. Be curious, take your time. This is entirely up to you.> AI takes away the fun part (coding) and intensifies the boring (management)I love programming but TBH, for non-toy projects that need to go into production, at least three quarters are boring boilerplate. And making that part interesting is one of the worst things you can do in software development! That path lies resume-driven development, architecture astronautics, abusing design patterns du jour, and other sins that will make code maintenance on that thing a nightmare! You want boring, stable, simple. AI excels at that. Then you can focus on the small tiny bit that's fun and hand-craft that!Also, you can always code for fun. Many people with boring coding jobs code for fun in the evenings. AI changes nothing here (except possibly improving the day job drudgery).> AI is financially unsustainable, companies are losing moneyPerhaps, and we're probably in the bubble. Doesn't detract from the fact that these things exist, are here now, work. OpenAI and Anthropic can go out of business tomorrow, the few TB of weights will be easily reused by someone else. The tech will stay.> AI steals your open source code, therefore you shouldn't write open-sourceWell, use AI to write your closed-source code. You don't need to open source anything if you're worried someone (AI or human) will steal it. If you don't want to use something on moral grounds, that's a perfectly fine thing to do. Others may have different opinion on this.> AI will kill your open source business, therefore you shouldn't write open-sourceOpen source is not a business model (I've been saying this for longer than median user of this site has been alive). AI doesn't change that.As @antirez points out, you can use AI or not, but don't go hiding under a rock and then being surprised in a few years when you come out and find the software development profession completely unrecognizable.
• anon
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• metalman
  the end run around copyright, is TOS that are forced on users, through distribution chanels(platforms),service providors, and actual "patented" hardware, so money will continue to flow up, not sideways. Given that there are a very limited number of things that can actualy be done with computer/phones, and it becomes clear that "AI" can arrange those in any possible configuration, the rest is deciding if it will jive with the users, and noticing when it doesn't, which I believe that AI will be unable to disern from other AI slop, imitating actual useres
• smohare
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• islma
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• arthurroman
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• echelon
  I love Antirez.> However, this technology is far too important to be in the hands of a few companies.This is the most important assessment and we should all heed this warning with great care. If we think hyperscalers are bad, imagine what happens if they control and dictate the entire future.Our cellphones are prisons. We have no fundamental control, and we can't freely distribute software amongst ourselves. Everything flows through funnels of control and monitoring. The entire internet and all of technology could soon become the same.We need to bust this open now or face a future where we are truly serfs.I'm excited by AI and I love what it can do, but we are in a mortally precarious position.
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  yard2010
  This is making me sad. The people that are going to lose their jobs will be literally weaponized against minorities by the crooked politicians that are doing their thing right now, it's going to be a disaster I can tell. I just wish I could go back in time. I don't want to live in this timeline anymore. I lost my passion job before anything of it even happened. On the paper.
• mehdi1964
  The shift isn’t about replacing programmers, it’s about changing what programming means—from writing every line to designing, guiding, and validating. Excited to see how open source and small teams can leverage this without being drowned by centralization.