13 ms·

I'm Archiving Picocrypt

233 points by jaden 1y ago

MarkusQ 1y ago
Wow. That was strangely...something. Simultaneously not what I expected and yet just nailing the vibe of vibe slop frustration.
- AndyNemmity 1y ago
  yep, it's a very old internet response, something you rarely see now. creative and interesting, in a meta sense.
- reasonableklout 1y ago
  It's a nice message and I sympathize with the frustration, but the critique falls flat with the author's decision to pivot into AI research.
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    Also the AI ghibli pfp...
    - subscribed 1y ago
      What's wrong with it?
      - latexr 1y ago
        It was clearly AI generated. So the author is clearly OK with using AI to generate slop in an area they don’t work in, while simultaneously decrying its use in an area they do work in. If they believe so strongly that AI use is destroying their industry, they should reflect on its effect on other industries too (it is well-documented how artists are being negatively impacted). I agree with the commenters above that it makes the critique fall flat. The author is saying “This thing is so frustrating and harmful it makes me want to stop working in a field because of it. Oh, by the way, I use this tool myself for other things, and will indeed pivot to contribute directly to them”.
        Lutger 1y ago
        I didn't interpret it as decrying the use of AI. Especially because he plans to dedicate his time and energy into researching the very same AI he rants about, basically promoting its use! Instead, I see it as a deeply personal rant about the state of affairs which he considers inevitable himself. That is why he leaves the ship. Before AI slop, there has always been just the agile slop of the bare(ly) minimum product, good enough to woo the ones making a buying decision, or at least until the career sharks have moved on to the next thing. That kind of slop has always been there and everywhere actually. Its called capitalism, or consumerism. The trick is to work for a place that isn't squeezed too hard, because its still in the investment phase or because it just earns money on its own merit. AI will certainly transform things, just like higher level languages and frameworks have done so. Maybe programming without AI will be the 'micro optimization' of the future: something that is still there and valuable, but only sometimes and only in a certain niche. Slop is eternal, it just has a new face and a new name. This blog to me is a nice personal rant about a smart young developer coming of age, trying to find his way and guard his ideals or standards against the onslaught of consumerism, just as ambitious young developers always have tried to do.
        ryandv 1y ago
        Exactly. The self-contradiction exposes this farce of an arrangement for what it is: talented engineers are presented with immense monetary incentives to automate themselves out of the workforce, their carefully honed craftsmanship to be replaced by hordes of monkeys at typewriters producing voluminous slop. Anybody can plainly see that the emperor is without clothes, but so long as the C-level rhetoric is sung to the tune of "Either you have to embrace the AI, or you get out of your career," [0] you may as well put on your own clown nose and wig and start dancing while the music is still playing and there are still seats out. Farcical circumstances prompt paradoxical responses. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44808645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44808645
        subscribed 1y ago
        Oh, I understand you now. Thank you. It didn't make this impression on me: I saw its generated or at least edited with LLM, but I assumed it's satire. Thanks for not fobbing me off!
    - neomantra 1y ago
      The entire thing was crafted, including the profile pic. His low-quality “petty comments” are to the low-effort haters.
  - whilenot-dev 1y ago
    > Advancements in intelligent AI and LLMs get me excited. Large and centered on the authors website: https://evansu.com/ https://evansu.com/
    - chromehearts 1y ago
      What a hypocrite lmao
      - qualeed 1y ago
        You can dislike what AI/LLMs are doing in the software development field, but be excited about their medical applications, as an example.
  - Shorel 1y ago
    The difference I perceive is the split between being the one designing the software, which is what he likes to do, and letting a LLM design the software, without the developer actually understanding what's going on, which is what he dislikes. (This short comment exchange between us is also a meta commentary on that. Because our comments are much shorter than all the AI summaries, and at the same time, we add nuance and clarification to the ideas exposed, something the AI summaries don't do.)
  - KaiserPro 1y ago
    > falls flat with the author's decision to pivot into AI research. yeah but _what_ part of AI research. There are loads of it that are nothing to do with slop, and might even have practical and useful benefits....
schmookeeg 1y ago
I am thinking of that quotation that said [paraphrasing] "90% of my skills went to $0, but the other 10% are now worth 1000x" This LLM-fuelled rant/departure is a thought-provoking expression of frustration from someone who focused on the 90%, not the 10% -- namely someone willing to handcraft software like an artisan. I think we're in the mass-production era for code and nobody wants a hand-crafted anything anymore. Automated and mass-produced please. "Quantity has a quality all its own"
- AndyNemmity 1y ago
  I think if you believe that 90% of skills went to 0% but the other 10% are worth 1000x, that makes sense. But even if that's true, the 1000x is going to go to far fewer humans. Maybe you're in the lucky % saved, but a lot of people won't be. It's interesting to consider. I don't have any takes one way or the other, I'm just observing. I have no idea how all of this works out.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  what exactly is the 90% that he focused on, and the 10% he didn't? Is the 90% just hand crafting? I don't believe there can be no place for hand crafting things at all, because there is not any other business or human endeavor in history which has been 100% mass produced without any place for artisans in the market. Even Automobile production has its place in the market for craftsmanship.
- croes 1y ago
  >I think we're in the mass-production era for code and nobody wants a hand-crafted anything anymore. Not all people like IKEA furniture. >Quantity has a quality all its own You understand the meaning of this Stalin attributed quote? I wouldn’t want that kind of quality in planes, cars, surgical robots, power plants etc. I think it’s a good time to introduce fines for severe damages by software bugs.
- its-summertime 1y ago
  (income × 0 × 0.9) + (income × 1000 × 0.1) = income × 100 Really looking forwards to the 10000% pay raise
nurettin 1y ago
LLMs are glorified "LMGTFY" tools. AI assistance doesn't make people experts at anything. Some genz vibe coder isn't getting your job guys calm the heck down.
- denkmoon 1y ago
  The fear is like telling on yourself.
  - kryptiskt 1y ago
    The fear may just be a result of thinking about who is making the decisions. I know I'm good, my peers know I'm good. But how far up in management chain does that knowledge go?
- forty 1y ago
  I think people who are afraid that AI coding is going to replace them should try using it a bit seriously. They should be quickly reassured. What worries me more (on coding related impact of AI - because of course all the impact on fake news and democracies are much more worrying IMO) is having to deal with code written by others using AI (yes, people can write shity code on their own, but with manageable pace)
  - ben_w 1y ago
    I'm not worried that LLMs, as they currently and foreseeably (i.e. 18 months) are, will be a good substitute for high quality developers like me. But oh boy have I seen a lot of mediocre coders get away with mediocrity for a long time — there's a big risk that employers won't care about the quality, just the price, for long enough that the developments in AI are no longer foreseeable.
  - xinayder 1y ago
    Tell that to C-level executives. They don't understand this, and until then, we, developers, can only be afraid of losing our jobs to a mediocre AI.
  - 1y ago
sky2224 1y ago
I think this is just a bit doomerish honestly. Yes, the AI hype is real, and yes there's a desire to cut costs by using AI within companies. However, I think the maintainer (Evan Su) has a bit of a narrow view on this matter. Evan is still a student in university. This doesn't mean his perspective or opinion should be disregarded, it's more just I think he's declaring quite a career defining absolute for himself before really having a solid foot in the industry. Frankly, this rant seems kind of fueled by intense doom-scrolling on linkedin rather than by first hand experience.
- hkt 1y ago
  To be fair, the job market is terrible. Not nearly as attributable to AI as people think, I suspect - I'd pin it on interest rates. Still, I'd consider other things if I had anywhere to go and he's not made a bad choice.
  - sky2224 1y ago
    If he's deciding to go elsewhere due to the current market, I think that's fair. However, probably his biggest talking point in the whole post is about how no one wants to craft artisan code anymore and how that's due to AI taking over and taking jobs. That's where I'm saying that the jump in conclusion is quite drastic given the absence of hard evidence of AI taking jobs being true (yet).
movetheworld 1y ago
Seems like a nice project. I'm still a little bit concerned with the VirusTotal result: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/81bbdffb92181a11692ec6651cc1831483ec6041266eb12eba9c71200248a8c4 https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/81bbdffb92181a11692ec665...
- MrGilbert 1y ago
  That is to be expected by a project that contains encryption code, I'd say. Maybe their userbase isn’t big enough to report all false-positives and gain the reputation needed.
  - whizzter 1y ago
    It could also be that some ransomware crap has used their codebase as a foundation for their system and then it gets flagged. It's a very very common problem in the Demoscene, demoscene authors striving to impress in the 64k category created better generic EXE compressors to shrink more content into their 64k binaries, just when any tool is publicly released it is almost immediately flagged by AV software since virus makers scour our forums knowing that once in a while a useful tool comes to hide their malicious code.
- PostOnce 1y ago
  Just as a rule of thumb, doesn't the fact that only a few unknown vendors flag it—and all of the major vendors do not—indicate something? It would suggest a false positive, wouldn't it?
- sakjur 1y ago
  When I checked a few years back, even a ”hello world” Go application compiled for Windows was flagged as malware by a malware scanner that I investigated. I’m not at a computer where I could try that hypothesis right now, but back then my conclusion after testing various executables was that any unsigned Go binary would be flagged as a malware.
- Shorel 1y ago
  I'm concerned about your comment. I envision a future when people can't deduct anything by themselves and will rely on automated, flawed systems. The problem is not knowing why and how the systems are flawed, and therefore being unable to have nuanced and truly accurate decisions.
MrGilbert 1y ago
I like the creativity behind this. And I feel sorry for them that the current wave of AI has lead to them abandoning their pet project. Maybe they will pick up the project again, once the dust has settled. At the end, at least for me, they are pet projects for exactly that reason: An escape route from the day to day business. One should still be proud of what they achieved in their spare time. I don’t care if my job requires me to use K8s, Claude or Docker. Or if that’s considered "industry standard". My projects, my rules.
rurban 1y ago
The new era Socrates dialogue. With a machine
raincole 1y ago
I don't get it. (I'm not trying to throw shades at the author. I know they have no obligation to maintain an open source project. I'm simply having a hard time gasping what's happening.)
- epolanski 1y ago
  Seems like the author is abandoning software because in his opinion due to AI explosion employers don't care anymore about code quality and only quality. I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense. Imo, what happened is that he took the opportunity of him entering academia to vent some stuff and quit maintaining his project.
  - worldsavior 1y ago
    He doesn't have interest in the project anymore. He didn't have a long time, and now that he stopped with software development and gone into the academia- he certainly doesn't have interest. Is that hard to get? He explained the reasons he went into the academia, which is because of the AI, and AI is not the reason he stopped with development.
  - shiomiru 1y ago
    > I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense. Yes, making software development cheaper has been the main priority of the industry for a long time. The new development is that there's now a magic "do what I want" button that obviously won't quite do what you want but it's so cheap (for corporations, not humanity...) that you might as well pretend it does. (Compared to paying professionals who might even care about doing a good job, that is.)
    - tracker1 1y ago
      I've been a web application developer for nearly 30 years now. I care about the craft and discipline immensely. Then you pull up something like the Jack-In-The-Box menu site and fully realize that managers/executives don't give a damn if the stuff works well... 48MB of built JS?!? My daughter expressed how badly the site was working on her phone, and I got curious. What's funny, is some will say, "use the app" instead for things like this... why should I trust someone to build a safe/secure app, who cannot build a reasonably functional website?
chromehearts 1y ago
Nice post really . I like the meta conversation . But in my opinion, it's a bit hypocritical to blame / be mad at LLMs etc. ruining the fun of coding because & then use AI generated profile pictures. Why not draw your ghibli styled profile picture yourself? Why use an AI generated image? Doesn't using image generators ruin the fun of drawing? Vibe-drawing? > He criticizes "Large tech companies and investors" for prioritizing "vibe coding," but not a specific company or individual. You could rewrite this generated response to match artists point of view as well lol
- ramon156 1y ago
  I second this, plus their responses are petty. As an example: > you're not helping anything or making some resonant statement with that thing above or your avatar > Sorry for breathing and producing CO2. That's not what the commenter argued, and that response is incredibly petty. It's a way to defuse the argument entirely (is that a straw-man? no idea).
  - chromehearts 1y ago
    Is it a strawman? I think so
zveyaeyv3sfye 1y ago
> What the fuck bro QFT
neom 1y ago
https://github.com/Picocrypt/Picocrypt/issues/134#issuecomment-3156427112 https://github.com/Picocrypt/Picocrypt/issues/134#issuecomme... This to me is the crux of the whole thing. Almost like a knitter throwing away their needles because they saw a loom.
- latexr 1y ago
  Considering the author is explicitly going into AI research, has an AI-generated profile picture, and claims front-and-centre on their website they are excited about LLMs, I don’t think that analogy works. Or rather, it is like a knitter throwing away their needles to eagerly go work in the loom manufacturing industry.
  - rikafurude21 1y ago
    I dont think many people would be excited at the thought of going from handcrafted artisan knitting to babying machines in the knitting factory. You need a certain type of autism to be into the latter.
    - roenxi 1y ago
      Fortunately this is the software industry. We've got a lot of those autists and that automating urge is the best part about software. If someone don't like the idea of sitting around babysitting factories of machines they certainly shouldn't go into DevOps. It would be safest to just avoid programming in general, given how much of the industry centres on figuring out how to deploy huge amounts of computing power in an autonomous fashion.
      - andai 1y ago
        Yeah, the whole industry is just speedrunning Factorio at this point.
    - dewey 1y ago
      The author is a student at a university. There's many paths to take that early in the career, I don't think people have to read too much into it.
sublinear 1y ago
I don't think this moment will age well. Is this an attempt to create a personal brand story?
Danborg 1y ago
This is dumb
uludag 1y ago
I've felt similar to the author, a sort of despair that the only point of writing software now is to prop up the valuation of AI companies, that quality no longer matters, etc. Then I realized that nothings stopping me from writing software how I want and feel is best. I've stopped using LLMs completely and couldn't be happier. I'm not even struggling at work or feeling like I'm behind. I work on a number of personal projects too, all without LLMs, and I couldn't feel better.
- immibis 1y ago
  This is also a good opportunity to remember that MIT is not a strong enough open source license, and if you want to prevent corporations making money off your work, make it AGPL or even SSPL, plus a statement that AI training creates a derivative work (the latter may or may not have any legal effect). MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. With a stronger license, at least they're more likely to contribute back or to pay you for a looser license.
  - fouronnes3 1y ago
    When are we getting a GPLv4 that's AGPL + no LLM training? This is overdue.
    - pjerem 1y ago
      Like if LLM training cared about respecting licenses. :(
    - Octoth0rpe 1y ago
      Given Meta's history of torrenting every book it could get its hands on for training, I'm not convinced that the majority of AI companies would respect that license. Maybe if we also had a better way to prove that such code was part of the training set and see a couple of solid legal victories with compensation awarded.
      - immibis 1y ago
tromp 1y ago
How does "a very small (hence Pico), very simple, yet very secure encryption tool" come to depend on OpenGL, threatening its future on MacOS?
- kevingadd 1y ago
  If you're using a portable library that needs to render graphics on mac, it's probably using OpenGL to do it unless it has a platform-specific backend.
  - nicoburns 1y ago
    Historically, yes. These days it might well be using wgpu.
- Timshel 1y ago
  > It's not easy to fix in the code either because it'll require major changes to the GUI library which can get messy, especially since GUIs were never a strength of Go.
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    There just doesn't seem to be a lot of viable competition to web based UIs these days.
- rollcat 1y ago
  Immediate mode UI toolkits are designed for pluggable backends, some even can discover the appropriate backend at runtime. If you're writing a game, you're expected to (and actually, you must) build your own integration. ImGUI and Nuklear each have 20+ backends in their repos: <https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/tree/master/backends https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/tree/master/backends> <https://github.com/Immediate-Mode-UI/Nuklear/tree/master/demo https://github.com/Immediate-Mode-UI/Nuklear/tree/master/dem...>
nullbyte808 1y ago
I forked it and named it NanoCrypt. Time to rip out the GUI code. muha ha ha!
- skylurk 1y ago
  Wouldn't that make it femtocrypt?
- miroljub 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bravesoul2 1y ago
    I can recommend an excellent system prompt, if times are rough
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
- zikduruqe 1y ago
  There's a cli version anyways... https://github.com/Picocrypt/CLI https://github.com/Picocrypt/CLI
- tptacek 1y ago
  Why else would you use this code other than for its UI?
jvanderbot 1y ago
Honestly I feel the same. I'm holding out hope that there will always be boutique/edge software to be written, which requires enough design and care to be mentally challenging and engaging - the craftsmanship kind. When AlphaGo was announced, I had to keep telling people that "It's not like computers win at Go, it's just that we now have a tool that makes us way better at Go". If an alien race showed up and challenged us to Go to save the species, would we use a Go player or a AlphaGo, if we had to choose? The problem is LLMs aren't like that, because software isn't like Go. And, they really are annoying to use, frustrating to redirect all the time, and generally cannot do what you want precisely, without putting in more mental energy to provide context and decompose further than you'd need to do the damn thing yourself. And then you lose an hour/two of flow, which is the reward for the whole process. But at certain times they are a godsend and they have completely replaced some of the more boring parts of my job. I wouldn't want to lose them, not at all. Like the author, I don't think we're heading to a healthy balance where LLMs help us be better at our job. I do think the hype is going in the wrong direction, and I do worry for the state of our field (Or at least the _ideals_ of our field). Call me naive, but I also thought it mattered what the code was.
spapas82 1y ago
This was really huge. I actually had to pass it to an LLM to get an abstract .... I didn't know about picocrypt but I already have two options for safely encrypting files: 7zip with its AES-256 (simple) and veracrypt with various algorithms (more involved but allows you to mount the encrypted vols). Actually these are already mentioned in the tool's readmy, great work: https://github.com/Picocrypt/Picocrypt?tab=readme-ov-file#comparison https://github.com/Picocrypt/Picocrypt?tab=readme-ov-file#co...
jongjong 1y ago
Damn. The part about quality over quantity really hit home. I also got into software engineering as a way to exert craftsmanship and am disappointed with the state of things. It's potentially a great field for people who are interested in the pursuit of perfection. There are few areas which are as complex and take so much time and effort to master. Software engineering provides a window into reality in a way which exposes you to its full complexity. It changes your brain, you start seeing complexity everywhere around you. You start seeing problems that nobody else sees. This is why I got into coding... But now the industry often feels like it's leading you astray and preventing you from truly flourishing. This is sad because being skilled at coding feels great and it shapes your reality in a very positive way. Being able to think clearly is a great gift and a worthy goal to strive for. Having a logical mind feels inherently good. Being able to approach any topic, with anyone and maintaining full logical consistency feels good.
uyzstvqs 1y ago
TLDR: Author of an open-source project has a crashout over other people using LLMs for coding, believes that AI will replace all developers, and decides to preemptively give up on software engineering entirely because of that. IMO anyone who understands AI at a technical level will understand that this won't happen. No matter how many parameters, training and compute you throw at it, putting AI in direct charge of anything that's critical and not entirely predictable is going to backfire. Though, based on response from this author, it should be apparent that his response comes from a place of emotion, misunderstanding, and likely conformism to dogmatic anti-AI rhetoric of the same nature, rather than actual reason and logic.
- progx 1y ago
  It is a matter of time. 5 years no problem. In 10 years some devs will be replaced. In 15 years, i don't think that "pure" developer jobs will exist in the most companies.
stoneyhrm1 1y ago
I understand the author's sentiment but industries don't exist solely because somebody wants them to. I mean, sure, hobbies can exist, but you won't be paid well (or even at all) to work with them. Software engineering pays because companies want people to develop software. It pays so well because it's hard, but the coding portion is become easier. Vibe coding and AI is here to stay, the author can choose to ignore it and go preach to a dying field (specifically, writing code, not CS), or embrace it. We should be happy we no longer need to type away if and for loops 20 times and instead can focus on high level architecture.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  it's not LLMs vs typing for loops by hand. It's LLMs vs snippets and traditional cheap, pattern based code generation, find and replace, and traditional refactoring tools those are still faster and cheaper and more predictable than an LLM in many cases
  - StopVibeCoding 1y ago
    too few developers understand this
Tepix 1y ago
The (current) last commend by hakavlad (same as hakavlad on HN perhaps?): @HACKERALERT Your decision may be somewhat irresponsible towards those who donated to the audit. That audit was one year ago. The money didn't go towards the author. The source continues to be available. The author doesn't own you zilch.
- rowanG077 1y ago
  Yes, I found this a profoundly weird comment. The audited code will be forever available and audited.
  - axus 1y ago
    Human beings are weird, and donations aren't always based on reason. I say it's better to discuss the feelings than worry about disapproval. Surely a recent audit only increases the odds of someone assuming responsibility for a fork. Knowing there is a solid baseline to proceed from.
- hakavlad 1y ago
  >The money didn't go towards the author. Perhaps many would have refused to donate if they knew that the project would be archived in a year. Collecting for audit and then archiving the project is, in a way, a violation of expectations.
  - IncreasePosts 1y ago
    Did they perform the audit? That is what is important. The more and more you start modifying code after the audit, the more and more useless the audit becomes.
    - hakavlad 1y ago
      Yes, they performed.
    - ranger_danger 1y ago
zamadatix 1y ago
In regards to "As long as you can run the code, archiving this project means nothing, really." I think this section misses the main concern of archived software - what happens when one of those bugs is run into (either something not yet noticed or something due to external changes down the road) and there is no actively maintained version (which could include one you're willing to hack st yourself) to just update to? The simpler the software the less urgent the concern but "I haven't had a problem in the last 2 years" is something I could say of most software which I end up needing to update, and it makes sense to make myself able to do so at a convenient time rather than the moment the problem occurs. This project seems popular enough I'm sure eaiting a bit and seeing who the successor project is would be a safe bet as well though.
blenderob 1y ago
I'm starting to feel kinda old and out of the loop. Could someone please explain the conversational style of this post? It begins with a prompt directed at Gemini, followed by what appears to be an AI-generated response. Are these actual AI responses or is the developer writing their parting message in a whimsical way? I'm genuinely confused. Help much appreciated!
- yifanl 1y ago
  This is a post framed in medias res, from the perspective of the developer, as portrayed by themselves, asking an LLM to construct the post that they post immediately afterwards. I'm unsure if the post is actually created by Gemini or the developer's imitation. I suspect the latter.
  - morkalork 1y ago
    It is also a demonstration of what he is frustrated with what software development is becoming.
- devheart 1y ago
  He posted a conversation with Gemini, including his real posts and then Gemini's responses.
- phyzome 1y ago
  It's something of a satire, although presumably actually comes from a "conversation" with Gemini (because who would bother writing a bot's verbose and uninsightful responses like that?)
r00t- 1y ago
Lol what a drama queen
tootie 1y ago
> I originally intended to work in the software engineering industry, but seeing the complete disregard for high quality code, overpowering greed and hype, and the layoffs that follow from it Replace "software engineering" with literally anything and this is a true statement since the dawn of civilization.
nektro 1y ago
> quits dev due to frustration at LLM adoption > new career path is LLM research what?? how do you square that circle. deciding to go contribute to the very thing that steered your path off course

233 points by jaden 1y ago

Wow. That was strangely...something. Simultaneously not what I expected and yet just nailing the vibe of vibe slop frustration.

AndyNemmity 1y ago
yep, it's a very old internet response, something you rarely see now. creative and interesting, in a meta sense.
reasonableklout 1y ago
It's a nice message and I sympathize with the frustration, but the critique falls flat with the author's decision to pivot into AI research.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  Also the AI ghibli pfp...
  - subscribed 1y ago
    What's wrong with it?
    - latexr 1y ago
      It was clearly AI generated. So the author is clearly OK with using AI to generate slop in an area they don’t work in, while simultaneously decrying its use in an area they do work in. If they believe so strongly that AI use is destroying their industry, they should reflect on its effect on other industries too (it is well-documented how artists are being negatively impacted). I agree with the commenters above that it makes the critique fall flat. The author is saying “This thing is so frustrating and harmful it makes me want to stop working in a field because of it. Oh, by the way, I use this tool myself for other things, and will indeed pivot to contribute directly to them”.
      - Lutger 1y ago
        I didn't interpret it as decrying the use of AI. Especially because he plans to dedicate his time and energy into researching the very same AI he rants about, basically promoting its use! Instead, I see it as a deeply personal rant about the state of affairs which he considers inevitable himself. That is why he leaves the ship. Before AI slop, there has always been just the agile slop of the bare(ly) minimum product, good enough to woo the ones making a buying decision, or at least until the career sharks have moved on to the next thing. That kind of slop has always been there and everywhere actually. Its called capitalism, or consumerism. The trick is to work for a place that isn't squeezed too hard, because its still in the investment phase or because it just earns money on its own merit. AI will certainly transform things, just like higher level languages and frameworks have done so. Maybe programming without AI will be the 'micro optimization' of the future: something that is still there and valuable, but only sometimes and only in a certain niche. Slop is eternal, it just has a new face and a new name. This blog to me is a nice personal rant about a smart young developer coming of age, trying to find his way and guard his ideals or standards against the onslaught of consumerism, just as ambitious young developers always have tried to do.
      - ryandv 1y ago
        Exactly. The self-contradiction exposes this farce of an arrangement for what it is: talented engineers are presented with immense monetary incentives to automate themselves out of the workforce, their carefully honed craftsmanship to be replaced by hordes of monkeys at typewriters producing voluminous slop. Anybody can plainly see that the emperor is without clothes, but so long as the C-level rhetoric is sung to the tune of "Either you have to embrace the AI, or you get out of your career," [0] you may as well put on your own clown nose and wig and start dancing while the music is still playing and there are still seats out. Farcical circumstances prompt paradoxical responses. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44808645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44808645
      - subscribed 1y ago
        Oh, I understand you now. Thank you. It didn't make this impression on me: I saw its generated or at least edited with LLM, but I assumed it's satire. Thanks for not fobbing me off!
  - neomantra 1y ago
    The entire thing was crafted, including the profile pic. His low-quality “petty comments” are to the low-effort haters.
- whilenot-dev 1y ago
  > Advancements in intelligent AI and LLMs get me excited. Large and centered on the authors website: https://evansu.com/ https://evansu.com/
  - chromehearts 1y ago
    What a hypocrite lmao
    - qualeed 1y ago
      You can dislike what AI/LLMs are doing in the software development field, but be excited about their medical applications, as an example.
- Shorel 1y ago
  The difference I perceive is the split between being the one designing the software, which is what he likes to do, and letting a LLM design the software, without the developer actually understanding what's going on, which is what he dislikes. (This short comment exchange between us is also a meta commentary on that. Because our comments are much shorter than all the AI summaries, and at the same time, we add nuance and clarification to the ideas exposed, something the AI summaries don't do.)
- KaiserPro 1y ago
  > falls flat with the author's decision to pivot into AI research. yeah but _what_ part of AI research. There are loads of it that are nothing to do with slop, and might even have practical and useful benefits....

schmookeeg 1y ago

I am thinking of that quotation that said [paraphrasing] "90% of my skills went to $0, but the other 10% are now worth 1000x" This LLM-fuelled rant/departure is a thought-provoking expression of frustration from someone who focused on the 90%, not the 10% -- namely someone willing to handcraft software like an artisan. I think we're in the mass-production era for code and nobody wants a hand-crafted anything anymore. Automated and mass-produced please. "Quantity has a quality all its own"

AndyNemmity 1y ago
I think if you believe that 90% of skills went to 0% but the other 10% are worth 1000x, that makes sense. But even if that's true, the 1000x is going to go to far fewer humans. Maybe you're in the lucky % saved, but a lot of people won't be. It's interesting to consider. I don't have any takes one way or the other, I'm just observing. I have no idea how all of this works out.
bryanrasmussen 1y ago
what exactly is the 90% that he focused on, and the 10% he didn't? Is the 90% just hand crafting? I don't believe there can be no place for hand crafting things at all, because there is not any other business or human endeavor in history which has been 100% mass produced without any place for artisans in the market. Even Automobile production has its place in the market for craftsmanship.
croes 1y ago
>I think we're in the mass-production era for code and nobody wants a hand-crafted anything anymore. Not all people like IKEA furniture. >Quantity has a quality all its own You understand the meaning of this Stalin attributed quote? I wouldn’t want that kind of quality in planes, cars, surgical robots, power plants etc. I think it’s a good time to introduce fines for severe damages by software bugs.
its-summertime 1y ago
(income × 0 × 0.9) + (income × 1000 × 0.1) = income × 100 Really looking forwards to the 10000% pay raise

nurettin 1y ago

LLMs are glorified "LMGTFY" tools. AI assistance doesn't make people experts at anything. Some genz vibe coder isn't getting your job guys calm the heck down.

denkmoon 1y ago
The fear is like telling on yourself.
- kryptiskt 1y ago
  The fear may just be a result of thinking about who is making the decisions. I know I'm good, my peers know I'm good. But how far up in management chain does that knowledge go?
forty 1y ago
I think people who are afraid that AI coding is going to replace them should try using it a bit seriously. They should be quickly reassured. What worries me more (on coding related impact of AI - because of course all the impact on fake news and democracies are much more worrying IMO) is having to deal with code written by others using AI (yes, people can write shity code on their own, but with manageable pace)
- ben_w 1y ago
  I'm not worried that LLMs, as they currently and foreseeably (i.e. 18 months) are, will be a good substitute for high quality developers like me. But oh boy have I seen a lot of mediocre coders get away with mediocrity for a long time — there's a big risk that employers won't care about the quality, just the price, for long enough that the developments in AI are no longer foreseeable.
- xinayder 1y ago
  Tell that to C-level executives. They don't understand this, and until then, we, developers, can only be afraid of losing our jobs to a mediocre AI.
- 1y ago

sky2224 1y ago

I think this is just a bit doomerish honestly. Yes, the AI hype is real, and yes there's a desire to cut costs by using AI within companies. However, I think the maintainer (Evan Su) has a bit of a narrow view on this matter. Evan is still a student in university. This doesn't mean his perspective or opinion should be disregarded, it's more just I think he's declaring quite a career defining absolute for himself before really having a solid foot in the industry. Frankly, this rant seems kind of fueled by intense doom-scrolling on linkedin rather than by first hand experience.

hkt 1y ago
To be fair, the job market is terrible. Not nearly as attributable to AI as people think, I suspect - I'd pin it on interest rates. Still, I'd consider other things if I had anywhere to go and he's not made a bad choice.
- sky2224 1y ago
  If he's deciding to go elsewhere due to the current market, I think that's fair. However, probably his biggest talking point in the whole post is about how no one wants to craft artisan code anymore and how that's due to AI taking over and taking jobs. That's where I'm saying that the jump in conclusion is quite drastic given the absence of hard evidence of AI taking jobs being true (yet).

movetheworld 1y ago

Seems like a nice project. I'm still a little bit concerned with the VirusTotal result: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/81bbdffb92181a11692ec6651cc1831483ec6041266eb12eba9c71200248a8c4 https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/81bbdffb92181a11692ec665...

MrGilbert 1y ago
That is to be expected by a project that contains encryption code, I'd say. Maybe their userbase isn’t big enough to report all false-positives and gain the reputation needed.
- whizzter 1y ago
  It could also be that some ransomware crap has used their codebase as a foundation for their system and then it gets flagged. It's a very very common problem in the Demoscene, demoscene authors striving to impress in the 64k category created better generic EXE compressors to shrink more content into their 64k binaries, just when any tool is publicly released it is almost immediately flagged by AV software since virus makers scour our forums knowing that once in a while a useful tool comes to hide their malicious code.
PostOnce 1y ago
Just as a rule of thumb, doesn't the fact that only a few unknown vendors flag it—and all of the major vendors do not—indicate something? It would suggest a false positive, wouldn't it?
sakjur 1y ago
When I checked a few years back, even a ”hello world” Go application compiled for Windows was flagged as malware by a malware scanner that I investigated. I’m not at a computer where I could try that hypothesis right now, but back then my conclusion after testing various executables was that any unsigned Go binary would be flagged as a malware.
Shorel 1y ago
I'm concerned about your comment. I envision a future when people can't deduct anything by themselves and will rely on automated, flawed systems. The problem is not knowing why and how the systems are flawed, and therefore being unable to have nuanced and truly accurate decisions.

MrGilbert 1y ago

I like the creativity behind this. And I feel sorry for them that the current wave of AI has lead to them abandoning their pet project. Maybe they will pick up the project again, once the dust has settled. At the end, at least for me, they are pet projects for exactly that reason: An escape route from the day to day business. One should still be proud of what they achieved in their spare time. I don’t care if my job requires me to use K8s, Claude or Docker. Or if that’s considered "industry standard". My projects, my rules.

rurban 1y ago

The new era Socrates dialogue. With a machine

raincole 1y ago

I don't get it. (I'm not trying to throw shades at the author. I know they have no obligation to maintain an open source project. I'm simply having a hard time gasping what's happening.)

epolanski 1y ago
Seems like the author is abandoning software because in his opinion due to AI explosion employers don't care anymore about code quality and only quality. I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense. Imo, what happened is that he took the opportunity of him entering academia to vent some stuff and quit maintaining his project.
- worldsavior 1y ago
  He doesn't have interest in the project anymore. He didn't have a long time, and now that he stopped with software development and gone into the academia- he certainly doesn't have interest. Is that hard to get? He explained the reasons he went into the academia, which is because of the AI, and AI is not the reason he stopped with development.
- shiomiru 1y ago
  > I don't get it either, because that has always been the case, thus most of his post is borderline non sense. Yes, making software development cheaper has been the main priority of the industry for a long time. The new development is that there's now a magic "do what I want" button that obviously won't quite do what you want but it's so cheap (for corporations, not humanity...) that you might as well pretend it does. (Compared to paying professionals who might even care about doing a good job, that is.)
  - tracker1 1y ago
    I've been a web application developer for nearly 30 years now. I care about the craft and discipline immensely. Then you pull up something like the Jack-In-The-Box menu site and fully realize that managers/executives don't give a damn if the stuff works well... 48MB of built JS?!? My daughter expressed how badly the site was working on her phone, and I got curious. What's funny, is some will say, "use the app" instead for things like this... why should I trust someone to build a safe/secure app, who cannot build a reasonably functional website?

chromehearts 1y ago

Nice post really . I like the meta conversation . But in my opinion, it's a bit hypocritical to blame / be mad at LLMs etc. ruining the fun of coding because & then use AI generated profile pictures. Why not draw your ghibli styled profile picture yourself? Why use an AI generated image? Doesn't using image generators ruin the fun of drawing? Vibe-drawing? > He criticizes "Large tech companies and investors" for prioritizing "vibe coding," but not a specific company or individual. You could rewrite this generated response to match artists point of view as well lol

ramon156 1y ago
I second this, plus their responses are petty. As an example: > you're not helping anything or making some resonant statement with that thing above or your avatar > Sorry for breathing and producing CO2. That's not what the commenter argued, and that response is incredibly petty. It's a way to defuse the argument entirely (is that a straw-man? no idea).
- chromehearts 1y ago
  Is it a strawman? I think so

zveyaeyv3sfye 1y ago

> What the fuck bro QFT

neom 1y ago

https://github.com/Picocrypt/Picocrypt/issues/134#issuecomment-3156427112 https://github.com/Picocrypt/Picocrypt/issues/134#issuecomme... This to me is the crux of the whole thing. Almost like a knitter throwing away their needles because they saw a loom.

latexr 1y ago
Considering the author is explicitly going into AI research, has an AI-generated profile picture, and claims front-and-centre on their website they are excited about LLMs, I don’t think that analogy works. Or rather, it is like a knitter throwing away their needles to eagerly go work in the loom manufacturing industry.
- rikafurude21 1y ago
  I dont think many people would be excited at the thought of going from handcrafted artisan knitting to babying machines in the knitting factory. You need a certain type of autism to be into the latter.
  - roenxi 1y ago
    Fortunately this is the software industry. We've got a lot of those autists and that automating urge is the best part about software. If someone don't like the idea of sitting around babysitting factories of machines they certainly shouldn't go into DevOps. It would be safest to just avoid programming in general, given how much of the industry centres on figuring out how to deploy huge amounts of computing power in an autonomous fashion.
    - andai 1y ago
      Yeah, the whole industry is just speedrunning Factorio at this point.
  - dewey 1y ago
    The author is a student at a university. There's many paths to take that early in the career, I don't think people have to read too much into it.

sublinear 1y ago

I don't think this moment will age well. Is this an attempt to create a personal brand story?

Danborg 1y ago

This is dumb

uludag 1y ago

I've felt similar to the author, a sort of despair that the only point of writing software now is to prop up the valuation of AI companies, that quality no longer matters, etc. Then I realized that nothings stopping me from writing software how I want and feel is best. I've stopped using LLMs completely and couldn't be happier. I'm not even struggling at work or feeling like I'm behind. I work on a number of personal projects too, all without LLMs, and I couldn't feel better.

immibis 1y ago
This is also a good opportunity to remember that MIT is not a strong enough open source license, and if you want to prevent corporations making money off your work, make it AGPL or even SSPL, plus a statement that AI training creates a derivative work (the latter may or may not have any legal effect). MIT is a donation of your labour to corporations. With a stronger license, at least they're more likely to contribute back or to pay you for a looser license.
- fouronnes3 1y ago
  When are we getting a GPLv4 that's AGPL + no LLM training? This is overdue.
  - pjerem 1y ago
    Like if LLM training cared about respecting licenses. :(
  - Octoth0rpe 1y ago
    Given Meta's history of torrenting every book it could get its hands on for training, I'm not convinced that the majority of AI companies would respect that license. Maybe if we also had a better way to prove that such code was part of the training set and see a couple of solid legal victories with compensation awarded.
    - immibis 1y ago

tromp 1y ago

How does "a very small (hence Pico), very simple, yet very secure encryption tool" come to depend on OpenGL, threatening its future on MacOS?

kevingadd 1y ago
If you're using a portable library that needs to render graphics on mac, it's probably using OpenGL to do it unless it has a platform-specific backend.
- nicoburns 1y ago
  Historically, yes. These days it might well be using wgpu.
Timshel 1y ago
> It's not easy to fix in the code either because it'll require major changes to the GUI library which can get messy, especially since GUIs were never a strength of Go.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  There just doesn't seem to be a lot of viable competition to web based UIs these days.
rollcat 1y ago
Immediate mode UI toolkits are designed for pluggable backends, some even can discover the appropriate backend at runtime. If you're writing a game, you're expected to (and actually, you must) build your own integration. ImGUI and Nuklear each have 20+ backends in their repos: <https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/tree/master/backends https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/tree/master/backends> <https://github.com/Immediate-Mode-UI/Nuklear/tree/master/demo https://github.com/Immediate-Mode-UI/Nuklear/tree/master/dem...>

nullbyte808 1y ago

I forked it and named it NanoCrypt. Time to rip out the GUI code. muha ha ha!

skylurk 1y ago
Wouldn't that make it femtocrypt?
miroljub 1y ago
[flagged]
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  I can recommend an excellent system prompt, if times are rough
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
zikduruqe 1y ago
There's a cli version anyways... https://github.com/Picocrypt/CLI https://github.com/Picocrypt/CLI
tptacek 1y ago
Why else would you use this code other than for its UI?

jvanderbot 1y ago

Honestly I feel the same. I'm holding out hope that there will always be boutique/edge software to be written, which requires enough design and care to be mentally challenging and engaging - the craftsmanship kind. When AlphaGo was announced, I had to keep telling people that "It's not like computers win at Go, it's just that we now have a tool that makes us way better at Go". If an alien race showed up and challenged us to Go to save the species, would we use a Go player or a AlphaGo, if we had to choose? The problem is LLMs aren't like that, because software isn't like Go. And, they really are annoying to use, frustrating to redirect all the time, and generally cannot do what you want precisely, without putting in more mental energy to provide context and decompose further than you'd need to do the damn thing yourself. And then you lose an hour/two of flow, which is the reward for the whole process. But at certain times they are a godsend and they have completely replaced some of the more boring parts of my job. I wouldn't want to lose them, not at all. Like the author, I don't think we're heading to a healthy balance where LLMs help us be better at our job. I do think the hype is going in the wrong direction, and I do worry for the state of our field (Or at least the _ideals_ of our field). Call me naive, but I also thought it mattered what the code was.

spapas82 1y ago

This was really huge. I actually had to pass it to an LLM to get an abstract .... I didn't know about picocrypt but I already have two options for safely encrypting files: 7zip with its AES-256 (simple) and veracrypt with various algorithms (more involved but allows you to mount the encrypted vols). Actually these are already mentioned in the tool's readmy, great work: https://github.com/Picocrypt/Picocrypt?tab=readme-ov-file#comparison https://github.com/Picocrypt/Picocrypt?tab=readme-ov-file#co...

jongjong 1y ago

Damn. The part about quality over quantity really hit home. I also got into software engineering as a way to exert craftsmanship and am disappointed with the state of things. It's potentially a great field for people who are interested in the pursuit of perfection. There are few areas which are as complex and take so much time and effort to master. Software engineering provides a window into reality in a way which exposes you to its full complexity. It changes your brain, you start seeing complexity everywhere around you. You start seeing problems that nobody else sees. This is why I got into coding... But now the industry often feels like it's leading you astray and preventing you from truly flourishing. This is sad because being skilled at coding feels great and it shapes your reality in a very positive way. Being able to think clearly is a great gift and a worthy goal to strive for. Having a logical mind feels inherently good. Being able to approach any topic, with anyone and maintaining full logical consistency feels good.

uyzstvqs 1y ago

TLDR: Author of an open-source project has a crashout over other people using LLMs for coding, believes that AI will replace all developers, and decides to preemptively give up on software engineering entirely because of that. IMO anyone who understands AI at a technical level will understand that this won't happen. No matter how many parameters, training and compute you throw at it, putting AI in direct charge of anything that's critical and not entirely predictable is going to backfire. Though, based on response from this author, it should be apparent that his response comes from a place of emotion, misunderstanding, and likely conformism to dogmatic anti-AI rhetoric of the same nature, rather than actual reason and logic.

progx 1y ago
It is a matter of time. 5 years no problem. In 10 years some devs will be replaced. In 15 years, i don't think that "pure" developer jobs will exist in the most companies.

stoneyhrm1 1y ago

I understand the author's sentiment but industries don't exist solely because somebody wants them to. I mean, sure, hobbies can exist, but you won't be paid well (or even at all) to work with them. Software engineering pays because companies want people to develop software. It pays so well because it's hard, but the coding portion is become easier. Vibe coding and AI is here to stay, the author can choose to ignore it and go preach to a dying field (specifically, writing code, not CS), or embrace it. We should be happy we no longer need to type away if and for loops 20 times and instead can focus on high level architecture.

dingnuts 1y ago
it's not LLMs vs typing for loops by hand. It's LLMs vs snippets and traditional cheap, pattern based code generation, find and replace, and traditional refactoring tools those are still faster and cheaper and more predictable than an LLM in many cases
- StopVibeCoding 1y ago
  too few developers understand this

Tepix 1y ago

The (current) last commend by hakavlad (same as hakavlad on HN perhaps?): @HACKERALERT Your decision may be somewhat irresponsible towards those who donated to the audit. That audit was one year ago. The money didn't go towards the author. The source continues to be available. The author doesn't own you zilch.

rowanG077 1y ago
Yes, I found this a profoundly weird comment. The audited code will be forever available and audited.
- axus 1y ago
  Human beings are weird, and donations aren't always based on reason. I say it's better to discuss the feelings than worry about disapproval. Surely a recent audit only increases the odds of someone assuming responsibility for a fork. Knowing there is a solid baseline to proceed from.
hakavlad 1y ago
>The money didn't go towards the author. Perhaps many would have refused to donate if they knew that the project would be archived in a year. Collecting for audit and then archiving the project is, in a way, a violation of expectations.
- IncreasePosts 1y ago
  Did they perform the audit? That is what is important. The more and more you start modifying code after the audit, the more and more useless the audit becomes.
  - hakavlad 1y ago
    Yes, they performed.
  - ranger_danger 1y ago

zamadatix 1y ago

In regards to "As long as you can run the code, archiving this project means nothing, really." I think this section misses the main concern of archived software - what happens when one of those bugs is run into (either something not yet noticed or something due to external changes down the road) and there is no actively maintained version (which could include one you're willing to hack st yourself) to just update to? The simpler the software the less urgent the concern but "I haven't had a problem in the last 2 years" is something I could say of most software which I end up needing to update, and it makes sense to make myself able to do so at a convenient time rather than the moment the problem occurs. This project seems popular enough I'm sure eaiting a bit and seeing who the successor project is would be a safe bet as well though.

blenderob 1y ago

I'm starting to feel kinda old and out of the loop. Could someone please explain the conversational style of this post? It begins with a prompt directed at Gemini, followed by what appears to be an AI-generated response. Are these actual AI responses or is the developer writing their parting message in a whimsical way? I'm genuinely confused. Help much appreciated!

yifanl 1y ago
This is a post framed in medias res, from the perspective of the developer, as portrayed by themselves, asking an LLM to construct the post that they post immediately afterwards. I'm unsure if the post is actually created by Gemini or the developer's imitation. I suspect the latter.
- morkalork 1y ago
  It is also a demonstration of what he is frustrated with what software development is becoming.
devheart 1y ago
He posted a conversation with Gemini, including his real posts and then Gemini's responses.
phyzome 1y ago
It's something of a satire, although presumably actually comes from a "conversation" with Gemini (because who would bother writing a bot's verbose and uninsightful responses like that?)

r00t- 1y ago

Lol what a drama queen

tootie 1y ago

> I originally intended to work in the software engineering industry, but seeing the complete disregard for high quality code, overpowering greed and hype, and the layoffs that follow from it Replace "software engineering" with literally anything and this is a true statement since the dawn of civilization.

nektro 1y ago

> quits dev due to frustration at LLM adoption > new career path is LLM research what?? how do you square that circle. deciding to go contribute to the very thing that steered your path off course