alt Hacker NewsNobody uses it. It’s completely broken and was dead on arrival. It can’t even reliably save files. Maybe eventually it’ll get to a sort of working state, but I doubt it.
I think that’s one of the things that’s jumped out at me in this latest slop wave from the last few weeks. Part of releasing meaningful software is the time investment by the creator is at least the barest of assurances that it’ll get some kind of support going forwards. Obviously not always, but the bigger the scope the more likely that is I think. If somebody spends 6 months on a project then it means it was worth at least 6 months to them and I believe there’s a higher chance they will continue to support it.
With stuff like this, it’s unusable and unmaintainable, and it got crapped out so fast that the creator has absolutely no emotional or personal investment in it beyond the token costs. I’m not suggesting every project needs a minimum amount of time spent on it, but it’s certainly a factor in how I judge software now, and choose what I want to interact with.
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On the other hand, we are barely a month in, that thing is still ongoing so it's hard to judge now.
I think this is one of the biggest open questions, not only for cloning software but for "vibe coding" in general. How hard is it actually to turn such things into polished products? Is it even feasiable or are you just drowning in slop at some point?
In short, a demonstration of commitment.
I have similar feelings about getting AI-generated "communications" from people (email, whatsapp, whatever).
The value of having a human send me a message is that there is also a signal in there - the human at least understands what whey they sent me. They may misunderstand the concept, they may be mostly inarticulate, they may in fact be altogether wrong, but at least I know what they think, and I know when to ask them for clarification.
When a message is sent from an AI, I have no idea if the human doing the copy-and-paste even understands what they are sending me. The signal that they understand the contents of the message, that signal is missing.
It's no different to asking someone a question, and them pasting parts of a manpage as their entire response: I can't tell if they understood what they sent me.