alt Hacker NewsOne of other authors he links to[0] brags that he's released 10 projects in the past month, like "Super Xtreme Mapper, a high-end, professional MIDI mapping software for professional DJs", which has 4 stars on Github. Despite the "high-end, professional...for professional" description, literally no one is going to use it, because this guy can't [be trusted to] maintain this software. Even if Claude Code is doing all the work, adding all the features, and fixing all the bugs, someone has to issue the command to do that work, and to foot the bill. This guy is just spraying code around and snorting digital coke.
There is plausibly something here with AI-generated code but as always, the value is not in the first release but in the years of maintenance and maturation that makes it something you can use and invest in. The problem with AI is that it's giving these people hyper-ADHD, they can't commit to anything, and no one will use vibe-coded tools--I'm betting not even themselves after a month.
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> snorting digital coke
What an apt description -- the website on the other side of that link is the most coked-out design I've ever seen.
Software products are about unique competitive value that grows over time. Products have it or not. AI produced software is like open source in a sense, you get something for free. But whose gonna get rich if everybody can just duplicate your product by asking AI to do it, again?
Think of investing in the stock market by asking AI to do all the trading, for you. Great maybe you make some money. But when everybody catches on that it is better to let the AI do the trading, then others's AI is gonna buy the same stocks as yours, and their price goes up. Less value for you.
> The problem with AI is that it's giving these people hyper-ADHD
Shouldn't be a problem - I've seen AT LEAST half a dozen almost-assuredly vibe coded projects related to dealing with ADHD in the last month...
Show HN: I gamified a productivity app to help my ADHD friends get things done https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797212
Show HN: built a 24h-clock based radial planner to help with ADHD time blindness https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46668890
Show HN: DayZen: Visual day planner for ADHD brains https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46742799
Show HN: ADHD Focus Light https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46537708
Show HN: I built Focusmo – a focus app for ADHD time-blindness https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46695618
Show HN: Local-First ADHD Planner for Windows and Android https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46646188
> One of other authors he links to[0] brags that he's released 10 projects in the past month, like "Super Xtreme Mapper, a high-end, professional MIDI mapping software for professional DJs", which has 4 stars on Github. Despite the "high-end, professional...for professional" description, literally no one is going to use it, because this guy can't [be trusted to] maintain this software. Even if Claude Code is doing all the work, adding all the features, and fixing all the bugs, someone has to issue the command to do that work, and to foot the bill. This guy is just spraying code around and snorting digital coke.
While I'd expect almost nobody to use apps meeting this description, I disagree about why:
It's not that other people have to foot the bill, it's that the bill is so low that it's a question of this particular app being discovered amongst all the others.
$15/month is a rounding error on most budgets. If every musician buys a Claude subscription and prompts for their own variations on this idea, there's a few million other apps that also do all that this app does, which vary from completely identical (because the prompts themselves were also) to utterly personalised for the particular preferences of exactly one artist.
There's this notion of software maintenance - that software which serves a purpose must be perennially updated and changed - which is a huge, rancid fallacy. If the software tool performs the task it's designed to perform, and the user gets utility out of it, it doesn't matter if the software is a decade old and hasn't been updated.
Sometimes it might, if there are security implications. You might need to fix bugs in networking code, or update crypto handling, or whatever, and those types of things are fine. The idea that you can't have legitimately useful one-off software, used by millions, despite not being updated, is a silly artifact of the MBA takeover of big tech.
Continuous development is not intrinsic to the "goodness" of software. Sometimes it's a big disappointment if software hasn't been updated consistently, but other times, it just doesnt matter. I've got scripts, little apps, tools, things that I've used, sometimes daily, for over a decade, that never ever ever get updated, and I'd be annoyed if I had to. They have simple tasks to perform that they do well; you dont need all the rest of the "and now we have liquid glass icons! oh, and mandatory telemetry, and if you want ads to go away, you must pay for a premium subscription"
The value is in the utility - the work done by the software. How much effort and maintenance goes into creating it often has nothing to do with how useful it is.
Look at windows 11 - hundreds of billions of dollars and years of development and maintenance and it's a steaming pile of horseshit. They're driving people to Linux in record numbers.
Blender is a counter example. They're constructive and deliberate.
What's likely to happen is everyone will have AI access to built-on-the-fly apps and tools that they retain for future use, and platforms will consolidate and optimize the available tools, and nobody will need to vibe-code or engage in extensive software development when their AI butler can do all the software work they might need done.
This is why I just roll my eyes when people are like "i'm building things I just didn't have time for before"
Ever stop to wonder that maybe the reason you didn't build it and didn't MAKE the time to build it is...because the idea sucks?
Nobody wants your idea slop.
None of these vibe coded businesses are going to last long term because guess what - why would I pay you anything when I will be able to just vibe code the thing I want myself if I want it bad enough?
Project vomit is just for people that want to pad their github stats. It's programmer virtue signalling. Yawn.
My feeling is that AI-generated code is disposable code.
It’s great if you can quickly stand up a tool that scratches an itch for you, but there is minimal value in it for other people, and it probably doesn’t make sense to share it in a repo.
Other people could just quickly vibe-code something of equal quality.