HN

Comments (321)

• jakewindle47
  LLMs have sucked all of the joy out of software engineering for me, and I've been doing it for 12 years.As others have pointed out, I'm looking at a career shift now. I'm essentially burning out on doing the whole LLM-assisted coding stuff while I still can, earning money on contracts, and then going to step away from the field. I'm lucky that I'm in a position to do so, but I really don't know what the rest of my career looks like.
• Menu

  agentultra
  Sorry for yucking into everyone's yum here but... did we miss an opportunity here as programmers to provide simpler tools for people to build simple applications for themselves?Since when did "average" people have time to set up a CI pipeline, agents, MCPs, and all the rest needed to get vibe coded apps to work become the "simple" way for non-programmers to use computers to mush some data together for their small businesses and neighbors and stuff?Did spreadsheets, embedded databases, and visual form builders stop working or are lacking in some way?Or are posts like this astro-turfing LLM posts from companies selling rent to build apps for non-tech folks?Again, apologize for sounding cynical but it's so hard telling what is genuine these days and I'm genuinely curious how farmers found the time to set up this stuff instead of just using a spreadsheet and a few macros.If LLMs are covering a gap here maybe there's an opportunity for better, local, lower-tech tooling that doesn't require such a huge tech stack (and subscriptions/rent) to solve simple, tractable problems?
• Menu

  ikidd
  Same here. Farmer now, former network engineer and software project lead, but I stopped programming almost 20 years ago.Now I build all sorts of apps for my farm and organizations I volunteer for. I can pound out an app for tracking sample locations for our forage associations soil sample truck, another for moisture monitoring, a fleet task/calendar/maintenance app in hours and iterate on them when I think of features.And git was brand new when I left the industry, so I only started using it recently to any extent, and holy hell, is it ever awesome!I'm finally able to build all the ideas I come up with when I'm sitting in a tractor and the GPS is steering.Seriously exciting. I have a hard time getting enough sleep because I hammer away on new ideas I can't tear myself away from.
• Workaccount2
  This is great, but it misses one thing:The software paradigm is changing.People don't need a calculator website anymore. They can just prompt their own AI account to generate whatever calculator they need in the moment. I already have a few pinned in my favorites that I use often.That is the real promise of AI driven software. Bespoke tiny apps available to anyone whenever they simply just ask for it.
• Menu

  phorkyas82
  Slightly moving into the other direction, after 17 years of science and tech optimism I see myself turning into a Luddite more and more. First observation was that communication and social aspects of software seems crucial for success and proliferation. And next came: that technology seems inept to solve any socio-econimic problems, but rather aggravates them.
• Menu

  YeGoblynQueenne
  >> The problem? Every compound interest calculator online is terrible. Ugly interfaces, ads covering half the screen, can't customize compounding frequency properly, no year-by-year breakdowns. I've tried so many. They all suck.While you can't do anything about (other peoples') interfaces, you can absolutely do something for ads. You can install an ad-blocker on your browser. This is not just for you, OP, it's for everyone: get an ad blocker. Your experience of the internet will be radically changed.I am reminded of this anytime I sit at someone else's computer who doesn't have an ad blocker, or whenever I see internet conversations complaining about ads; I wonder "what ads"? Then I remember: the ads I'm blocking.So do yourself a big, warm, fuzzy favour and make the internet better for you. Block ads today.Choose your own ad blocker, obviously.What, you thought this was an ad for a specific ad blocker, didn't you? Nah, any one will do. Just block bloody ads.
• TyrunDemeg101
  Nice man, good for you. I was feeling burned out as well, but LLMs have allowed me to focus on solving and creating rather than the low level issues that constantly were the focus.
• Menu

  cube00
  Made with care for accuracy.I'm not sure how you can claim this on the footer of every page when you're vibe coding these calculators.
• Menu

  shelled
  I, on the other hand, am getting gradually, but strongly, disillusioned, and importantly also feeling disenfrenchised, from coding and the world around it.
• Menu

  fourside
  > Stack: Next.js, React, TailwindCSS, shadcn/ui, four languages (EN/DE/FR/JA). The AI picked most of this when I said "modern and clean."I’m not an AI hater but I do see this as evidence of LLMs being susceptible to chasing trends as much as people.Next.js with server rendered React is not a stack that an experienced web developer would have recommended for a “clean” solution to a collection of financial calculators. It’s the answer you’d get if you asked for the stack that’s trending the most lately.
• giancarlostoro
  I recommend you get Claude proper subscription. You can spend $100 a month for Max and get way more API usage out of it, or for $17 if you are patient about hitting limits its still way cheaper than using the API directly.I have a similar experience but its moreso AI lets me build my side projects I only have time to research on, not much time or energy to actually code. I get to review the code and have Claude inspect it (most people I feel dont have Claude do code audits) and tell me where theres bugs, security issues, etc. I do this routinely enough.
• Menu

  chriskanan
  Same here. I’m an AI professor, but every time I wanted to try out an idea in my very limited time, I’d spend it all setting things up rather than focusing on the research. It has enabled me to do my own research again rather than relying solely on PhD students. I’ve been able to unblock my students and pursue my own projects, whereas before there were not enough hours in the day.
• Menu

  mr_mitm
  Same here.Creating a polished, usable app is just so much work, and so much of it isn't fun at all (to me). There are a few key parts that are fun, but building an intuitive UI, logging, error handling, documentation, packaging, versioning, containerization, etc. is so tedious.I'm bewildered when I read posts by the naysayers, because I'm sitting here building polished apps in a fraction of the time, and they work. At least much better than what I was able to build over a couple of weekends. They provide real value to me. And I'm still having fun building them.I now vibe coded three apps, two of them web apps, in Rust, and I couldn't write a "Hello World" in Rust if you held a gun to my head. They look beautiful, are snappy, and it being Rust gives me a lot of confidence in its correctness (feel free to disagree here).Of course I wouldn't vibe code in a serious production project, but I'd still use an AI agent, except I'd make sure I understand every line it puts out.
• ChrisMarshallNY
  Good luck, and welcome back.For myself, I’ve always enjoyed “getting my hands dirty” with code, and the advent of LLMs have been a boon. I’m retired from 34 years of coding (and managing), and never skipped a beat. I’ve released a few apps, since retiring. I’m currently working on the first app that incorporates a significant amount of LLM assistance. It’s a backend admin tool, but I’ll probably consider using the same methodology for more public-facing stuff, in the future.I am not one to just let an LLM write a whole app or server, unsupervised (I have control issues), but have allowed them to write whole functions, and help me to find the causes of bugs.What LLMs have given me, is a decreased hesitance to trying new things. I’ve been learning new stuff at a furious rate. My experience makes learning very fast. Having a place to ask questions, and get [mostly] good answers (experience helps me to evaluate the answers), is a game-changer.> “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” –John A. Shedd[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
• Menu

  jackfranklyn
  Similar path here - studied physics, worked in accounting/finance for years, hadn't shipped code in forever. The thing that clicked for me wasn't the AI itself but realising my domain knowledge had actually been compounding the whole time I wasn't coding.The years "away" gave me an unusually clear picture of what problems actually need solving vs what's technically interesting to build. Most devs early in their careers build solutions looking for problems. Coming back after working in a specific domain, I had the opposite - years of watching people struggle with the same friction points, knowing exactly what the output needed to look like.What I'd add to the "two camps" discussion below: I think there's a third camp that's been locked out until now. People who understand problems deeply but couldn't justify the time investment to become fluent enough to ship. Domain experts who'd be great product people if they could prototype. AI tools lower the floor enough that this group can participate again.The $100 spent on Opus to build 60 calculators is genuinely good ROI compared to what that would have cost in dev hours, even for someone proficient. That's not about AI replacing developers - it's about unlocking latent capability in people who already understand the problem space.
• heffstaDug
  I am still an "Engineer" but for years have been mostly meetings and Architecture, so I had same experience as you with Vibe Coding, I can get some of my ideas down quickly with my limited time available, but still apply my Engineering knowledge to drive the agents. it has been really enjoyable to get actual ideas out without hitting walls of blockers of getting things running. I know many people enjoy those problems, but I am one of those that after a day of solving hard problems, want to enjoy getting my personal ideas out. I wrote about one I built over Christmas: https://michaeldugmore.com/p/family-planner-vibe-coding-rule...
• Menu

  vim-guru
  I'm at the opposite end. I feel AI is sucking all the joy out of the profession. Might pivot away and perhaps live a simpler life. Only problem is that I really need the paycheck :(
• Menu

  brushfoot
  It's a shame to find an AI-written ad so highly upvoted here.The author even insists that AI was used because of their poor English, which is the standard excuse on Reddit as well. But clearly, this is not a translation:> Curious if others have similar stories. Anyone else come back to building after stepping away?This is bog-standard AI slop to increase engagement.Look at the blog on their linked site as well. AI-generated posts.This has been posted here for SEO. This is a business venture.It's times like this when I think HN needs a post downvote button. Flagging might not be quite appropriate here, but I hate to see this content cluttering up the front page.
• porcoda
  I’m glad to see people finding coding accessible again. To me this kind of common “AI made coding fun and accessible again” message signals something deeper. As a field, we allowed our systems to get so complex that we lost people: and AI tools are bringing them back. Maybe we should look at how we have chosen to design systems and say “can these be made simpler and more accessible”? Even before AI systems I looked at my field with sadness: there is complexity growing everywhere and few people looking to address that. Instead, we seem to have incentivized creating complexity because new complicated systems that are hard to use lead to career advancement if you can point at something and say “I am one of the few who can deal with that” or “I created that complex thing”. The ability to handle the complexity makes an individual valuable even though the effect is it excludes many others.Perhaps if we didn’t have deep layer cakes of frameworks and libraries, people would feel like they can code with or without AI. Feels like AI is going to hinder any efforts to address complexity and justify us living with unnecessary complexity simply because a machine can write the complex, hard to understand, brittle code for us.
• Menu

  veunes
  The key phrase here is "I still had domain expertise". Many miss that AI is a multiplier. If you multiply 0 by AI, you get 0 (or hallucinated garbage). You multiplied your knowledge of compound interest and UX by AI's speed. Without your background, the AI would have generated a beautiful interface that calculates mortgages using a savings account formula. Your role shifted from "code writer" to "logic validator" - this is the future of development for domain specialists
• Menu

  lrvick
  By contrast, the moment I am no longer able to compete with AI users, is the moment I quit the industry. I have no interest in outsourcing my thinking.Thankfully LLMs are still very stupid. Especially when it comes to security engineering, my specialty, so looks like I have a while yet.
• Menu

  j1436go
  Happy for everyone who enjoys it. For me it's the opposite: AI everywhere sucks the joy out of it and I'm seriously starting to consider a career shift after roughly 10 years of writing code for a living.
• Menu

  callamdelaney
  He also wrote this post with AI if I had to guess.
• Menu

  mjburgess
  In this sense LLMs are another wave of "end-user programming" like excel formula. This has been the recurring experience of many in these waves.
• ramon156
  > Too slow, too many bugs ... the usualYou improve over time. I've been programming for 6 years and I still feel like I'm nowhere near others. That's a completely fine and valid thing to feel.
• Menu

  codenighter
  really appreciate your work sir, I too believe in compounding. But still I don't know why sometimes it feels hard continuing.. still learning coding the old way. I feel, someday it will give me some edge, I just love coding the old way. Sometimes I feel anxious and kind of unsure about my approach but I have decided to continue what I am doing as I am too young in my 20's so I think it's ok to explore till I enjoy doing it. Thank you for sharing your work sir. Hope you keep learning and growing.
• oidar
  Related: https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1qfjwpe/ralph_l...
• dgxyz
  Reality: LLMs allow you to assemble shitty frustrating stacks quickly.That's creating a new inefficient, socially destructive, environmentally damaging hammer because solving the real problem doesn't sell well.I'll be happy when we solve THAT problem.
• Havoc
  Yeah enjoying it too, though it’s a different type of joy than hand rolling it. More getting things done fast which is neat but less proud of what one craftedCan definitely understand the reluctance people feel around it. Especially when they’ve invested years into it and have their livelihood on the lineI’m also quite reluctant to publish any of it. Doesn’t feel right to push code I don’t fully understand so mostly personal projects for now
• Menu

  jinushaun
  I don’t like AI for production code, but I love it for ideation and prototyping. I agree. It really allows you to quickly iterate on ideas without being blocked by implementation details.
• brap
  One thing that’s always missing from these compound interest calculators is multiple assets with different rates, and different rates over time (e.g between X date and Y date use Z rate, etc). I didn’t quite figure out the right UI for the second one.
• gandreani
  What did you use for the graphs on the site? They look nice!
• skybrian
  Looks nice!Nit: it seems like the graph for the compound interest calculator should start at year 0 rather than year 1.Also, it might be nice to have a way to change the starting year to the actual year you want to start (such as the current year).
• Tistel
  I have seen code bases that are amazing. I have seen ones that look bad, but work. About a year and half ago I saw my first fairly large scale fully AI generated project and it filled me with dread. It looked like the figma, which is very impressive. But under the hood it was bizarre. It was like those sci-fi movie tropes of teleportation where one of the people teleport and the destination coordinates are wrong and the merge with a tree or rock or whatever. There was so much unused junk that had nothing to do with anything. Ugh. My task to was to figure out why the initial render took so long. (unsurprisingly it was loading all the data then rendering, so with toy dev loads it was fine, in production nightmare and getting worse). So I just got to it and made some progress. But the new grad (who thought I was a dinosaur (might be right)) who made it was working in parallel and reintroducing more slop. So it became this Sisyphean task where I am speeding things up (true dinosaur so measuring things) and they were cutting and pasting and erasing the gains.I have always found management to be just silly exercise in day full of meetings. I like to make things. I could retrain, but, the salary drop would be very hard. Hope to find one last gig and have enough to retire. I still get that spark of joy when all the tests pass.
• Menu

  dharmatech
  Does the "iv" in your name stand for "implied volatility" by chance? : - )
• ako
  It’s more like AI provides the development team, and you are the key user and product manager that comes with all the requirements and domain knowledge, the lead architect reviewing the architecture, and the lead UXer reviewing the UX.
• Menu

  pahbloo
  There is an interesting pattern emerging in this thread. There are a lot of 'same here' and 'opposite for me' comments, but both sides are converging on the same point: people developing software to solve a problem.Many who are considering a career shift away from software due to 'AI disgust' devoted their lives to developing software because they loved the craft. But with AI churning out cheap, ugly, but passable code, it's clear that businesses never appreciated the craft. I hope these folks find an area outside of SWE that they love just as much.But once these folks find this area, it would be naive to think they won't use software to scratch their itch. In the same way that people who didn't pursue a career in SWE (because they felt under-qualified) are using AI to solve their problems, these folks will now find their own problems to solve with software, even if at first that is not their intention. They probably won't use AI to write the code, but ultimately, AI is forcing everyone to become a product manager.
• glimshe
  I use AI as a senior developer I ask questions to. It gives me an answer, which I can use on my work or not. Saved me days of work, but I couldn't be taken out (yet) of the loop because I'm still making the decisions...
• anon
  undefined
• alt227
  The tools he created speaks volumes about his interests and what is important to him in life.
• jillesvangurp
  I never stopped developing but I find myself taking on a lot more side projects than I used to. The cost for doing those just dropped significantly. This enables me to prototype and pursue things that I previously wouldn't have.I'm also now dealing with things that previously would have taken me too long to deal with. For example, I'm actually making a dent in the amount of technical debt I have to deal with. The type of things where previously I maybe wouldn't have taken a week out of my schedule to deal with something that was annoying me. A lot of tedious things that would take me hours/days now can get done in a few prompts. With my bigger projects, I still do most stuff manually. But that's probably going to change over the next months/year.I'm mainly using codex. I know a lot of people seem to prefer Claude Code. But I've been a happy ChatGPT Plus user for a while and codex is included with that and seems to do the job. Amazing value for 20$/month. I've had to buy extra credit once now.The flip side of all this is that waiting for AI to do it's thing isn't fun. It's slow enough that it slows me down and fast enough that I can't really multi task. It's like dealing with a very slow build that you have to run over and over again. A necessary evil. But not necessarily fun. I can see why a lot of developers feel like the joy is being sucked out of their lives.Dealing with this pain is urgent. Part of that is investing in robust and fast builds. Build time competes with model inference in the time stuff takes. And another part is working on the UX of this. Being able to fork multiple tasks at once is hugely empowering. And switching between editing code and generating code needs to get more seamless. It feels too much like I'm sitting on my hands sometimes.
• Menu

  sbondaryev
  Nice project! One small suggestion, adding a search or category filter would help simplify navigation given the number of calculators available.
• KellyCriterion
  haha, you even have localisation for some languages! :-))Cool project!
• Menu

  dsmurrell
  That looks sweet. It would be great to adjust for inflation based on predicted inflation rates over the period.
• tacone
  Thank you for the beautiful story. I work as a developer and have experienced the same in my personal projects, linux setup and - in general - all the collaterals.AI is eroding the entry barrier, the cognitive overload, and the hyper-specialization of software development. Once you step away from a black-and-white perspective, what remains is: tools, tools, tools. Feels great to me.
• qweiopqweiop
  The table doesn't work (scroll sideways) on my mobile just FWIW
• myth_drannon
  I didn't quit coding but I also vibe coded something similar despite having found thousands of similar utilities (retirement calculators) so I vibe coded (with base44) https://boringretirementcalculator.comWhat can I say... If you used a calculator to get an answer for sqrt(2) are you back to doing mathematics? It's simpler and more fun instead of using Newton method. But it's debatable if you are actually working on mathematics problems.
• stephenr
  Look, do what works for you obviously but this just reinforces my view that the people who see "AI Code agents" as a useful thing, are the people who don't know how to write code themselves.For the same reason things like Image Playground/etc seem magical/appealing to non-artists (myself included): we don't know how to do it ourselves, so it feels empowering.Or more close to home: it's the same reason that developers are so in love with clicking some buttons in the <insert cloud mega provider> dashboard in spite of the costs, lock-in, more costs, yet more costs, and of course the extra costs.As with those choosing "cloud" services they don't need, here too there will no doubt be a lucrative market to fix the shit once people realise that there's a reason experts charge the way they do.
• ichik
  Huh.https://youtu.be/JJz5D9txeGA
• fennecfoxy
  I think people would have reacted a lot more positively if you'd said right up front in the first line "hey look guys, yes I wrote this with ChatGPT but I am not a native English speaker so I've used AI to translate"Otherwise it feels deceptive. Which is surprising given we should judge off intentions and not augmentation (like come on guys this is HN FFS).This guy's not running any ads on the site, hasn't spammed with multiple posts that I've seen. I still think investment funds/modern stock exchanges are needless parasites upon society but that's just my opinion.
• adrianwaj
  But when will Larry Fink start vibecoding DeFi ?!!
• Menu

  mk12
  The "knowledge base" at the bottom is 100% slop. Why? Why inflict this on people?
• themilantej
  did you build it entirely using AI?
• hahahahhaah
  Happy compunding! Wish I had started younger but catching up. 25% of your salary into a pension in global indexes I think is the way. You never get to touch it, no decisions to make and just forget it. Live life. Have a lot of money later. (Maybe go down to 5% for when needed e.g. buying a house. Having a baby)
• Menu

  groggo
  Congrats! I never stopped coding, but AI makes it way more productive and fun for sure.$100 seems like a lot. I guess if you think about it compared to dev salaries, it's nothing. But for $10 per month copilot you can get some pretty great results too.
• DeathArrow
  >The problem? Every compound interest calculator online is terrible. Ugly interfaces, ads covering half the screen, can't customize compounding frequency properly, no year-by-year breakdowns. I've tried so many. They all suck.Have you tried this? https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calcula...
• Menu

  GrowingSideways
  I searched for "simple interest" and found nothing. What on earth is this searching? I would not put your name next to this.Edit: I appreciate the quick turnaround. Apologies.
• Menu

  anon_anon12
  Well in my opinion there's nothing wrong with vibe-coding. You can completely use it to make your passion projects. I draw the line when people try to sell their vibe-coded project as something huge, putting people at the risk of potential security breaches while also taking money out of them.Every other day I see ads of companies saying "use our AI and become a millionaire", this kind of marketing from agentic IDEs implies no need for developers who know their craft, which as said above, isn't the case.
• lifetimerubyist
  Hey, it's very cool that you've gotten motivated to build again - and please don't take this personally, because this is more about the philosophical and cultural implications of AI and not just this particular post/project.But these are the kinds of things that pretty much general purpose AI can just oneshot in a single prompt now.For example, the other day I wanted to know how much caffeine I was taking in based on my coffee intake. So I asked Claude to just build me an app where it would show my current caffeine "load" in my system, and increase it when I pushed a button with the volume of the coffee, and even had real-time decay of the amount of caffeine in my system. One shot.Anyone can just get these kinds of things made for themselves on-demand. We don't need nice apps anymore, because now software is completely disposable and customized per person. So what is the point of even building these kinds of "fun" tools anymore? Feels like we are essentially doomed to only churn out AI orchestration platforms and fast fashion throwaway b2b sass apps for our coporate overlords now. Lifestyle/small business software companies are basically going to go extinct long term. Just give Sam Altman money and GPT will make whatever you want and who cares if it's actually good or not because you'll just throw it away when you're done. Fast Fashion Software.AI has taken everything I liked about developing software out of the equation and handed it over to a bot. Now I'm just doing the things that I find mostly annoying (code review, reviewing specs, triaging bugs) and not the things I actually enjoy - writing code and solving problems.
• Menu

  leothetechguy
  I've lost the joy in programming, the only thing I'm good at, I now make horrible music, but at least I don't exist as the means to an end that I don't control.
• zecg
  > Vibe coding didn't make me a 10x engineer. But it gave me permission to build again. Ideas I've had for years suddenly feel achievable. That's honestly the bigger win for me.Did fucking AI also write your article?
• Menu

  renewiltord
  LLMs are the best BI tool available.
• ares623
  As I read this post I realized that a majority of my US colleagues _write exactly like that_ holy crap it’s gonna bug me all the time now.
• Menu

  dyauspitr
  Same. Fell out of love with programming after the first few years because the thought of spending my life staring at a screen and dealing with insignificant minutia suddenly seemed horrible. Spent a lot of years in management and LLMs gave me a way to build things I wanted again. Currently building a platformer.
• anon
  undefined
• artemonster
  This shit is written with ChatGPT
• mrklol
  For me it’s kinda the same. I always hated typing actual code, I love planing, reading, finding bugs etc. But writing code? Eh, I never enjoyed that. Now with agents I can kinda do exactly what I like, plan, write in natural langue and then do code review.
• throwaway2027
  > Stack: Next.js, React, TailwindCSS, shadcn/ui, four languages (EN/DE/FR/JA). The AI picked most of this when I said "modern and clean."I guess this is what separates some people. But I always explicitly tell it to use only HTML/JS/CSS without any libraries that I've vetted myself. Generating code allows you now not having to deal with it a lot more.Cool to hear nonetheless. Can we now also stop stigmatizing AI generated music and art? Looking at you Steam disclosures.
• cadamsdotcom
  Genuine congratulations. Ignore the unconstructive comments you’ll get (I already flagged one.)This is a revolution, welcome back to coding :)
• foke82
  The current trend made me realize I don't like coding so much as I like creating stuff. So I'm happy I can build the stuff faster in an increasingly tight schedule as I'm getting older. I have always done small projects at home, few of which would reach maturity, and I was doing less and less every year, until recently!