5 ms·

I suspect that this will drive the folks who insist LLM productivity gains are the real hallucinations truly bonkers.

fhennig 9mo ago
IMO a productivity gain of about x2 seems about right!
anonymous908213 9mo ago
No, the fact that Show HN is spammed with LLM-generated garbage is what drives me bonkers. The Show HNs are in fact living proof of how illusory LLM productivity gains are, because we are overwhelmed with trivial proof-of-concepts that have no merit, not even the merit of a human having put effort into creating something neat, rather than actually interesting software anybody would try or discuss.
- as1mov 9mo ago
  Related that r/selfhosted has banned AI built projects except on Fridays[1] to keep up with the increased deluge of garbage, which are mostly built for CV padding rather than making anything useful for the community. https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1qfp2t0/mod_announcement_introducing_vibe_code_friday/ https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1qfp2t0/mod_ann...
- sepositus 9mo ago
  This is a valid observation. I wonder though if people who have been coding for decades, but choose to use AI assistance, would fall under the same AI slop category. It’s an interesting dilemma because the overwhelming amount of content getting posted just ends up breeding a ton of negative feelings towards any amount of AI usage.
  - jacquesm 9mo ago
    It will if you let it. The number of times the AI has come up with 'I can write you 'x', 'y' or 'z' in a heartbeat, just say the word' and I keep on having to steer it back to the track of being a repository of knowledge rather than an overeager very junior co-worker that can't help themselves to want to show off their skills. It's very tiresome. Like an idiot/savant, they're an idiot most of the time and every 10th try you go 'oh, but that's neat and clever'.
- CuriouslyC 9mo ago
  Counterpoint: You won't admit anything generated with LLMs is good? I don't see any evidence of your fairness in your comment, so why should I consider you any differently than the angry dude at the bar complaining over his drinks about how things were in his day?
  - anonymous908213 9mo ago
    > You won't admit anything generated with LLMs is good? Nowhere in my comment did I say this, so this is quite a non-sequitur you've based the following personal attack upon. Regardless of whether it's possible to use LLMs to generate good things, the vast majority of things generated with them are not good, and if the good things exist, they are being drowned out in a sea of spam, increasingly difficult to discover along with the good human-generated content. I have to say, I would characterise both your comment and the original comment I replied to as being considerably more "unfair" than mine. The first comment was clearly written in such a way to get a rise out of people. Your reply is directly insinuating that I'm out-of-touch and ranting at clouds.
7777777phil 9mo ago
I feel like HN is quite divided about that actually, A couple of days I started a survey which I plan to run monthly to see how the community feels about "LLM productivity etc". Now I have ~250 answers, need a couple more to make it significant but as of now it looks like >90% report productivity gains from AI tools - happy if you participate, only takes a minute: https://agentic-coding-survey.pages.dev/ https://agentic-coding-survey.pages.dev/
- anonymous908213 9mo ago
  Note that self-reporting productivity gains is a completely unreliable and unscientific metric. One study[1], small in scope but a noteworthy data point, found that over the course of the study that LLMs reduced productivity by ~20% but even after the fact the participants felt that on average their productivity had increased by ~20%. This study is surely not the end-all be-all and you could find ways to criticise it or say it doesn't apply or they were doing it wrong or whatever reason you think the developers should have had increased productivity, but the point is that people cannot accurately judge their own productivity by vibes alone. [1] https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/ https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
  - 7777777phil 9mo ago
    If you look at the survey it's not only about productivity it's also about usage, model choice etc. But I agree with you self reported productivity gains is to be taken with a grain of salt. But then what else would you propose? The goal is to not only rely on benchmarks for model performance but develop some kind of TIOBE Index for LLMs.
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      The ever-present rebuttal to all LLM failure anecdotes: you're using the wrong model, you're prompting it wrong, etc. All failures are always the user's fault. It couldn't possibly be that the tool is bad.
xyzsparetimexyz 9mo ago
It's slop disguised as productivity.
Semaphor 9mo ago
/r/selfhosted also got tons of new submissions, all unmaintainable AI slop. Now that they are only allowed on Fridays, it calmed down again. But I guess folks who insist on AI superiority think that’s a productivity gain.
- CuriouslyC 9mo ago
  The people spamming built bad stuff because they don't know any better. They would have built zero software without AI, so to the extent that anyone built anything working at all, it's basically an infinite productivity increase for those people.
Tade0 9mo ago
They are, but in the sense of net productivity gains. Responsible people who use their knowledge to review LLM-generated code will produce more - up to their maximum rate of taking responsibility. Irresponsible people will just smear shit all over the codebase. The jury is out what's the net effect and the agents' level of sophistication is a secondary factor.
jacquesm 9mo ago
AI productivity gains are not found in the slop bucket with projects tossed off after five prompts and zero intention of keeping them alive for the longer run.

IMO a productivity gain of about x2 seems about right!

No, the fact that Show HN is spammed with LLM-generated garbage is what drives me bonkers. The Show HNs are in fact living proof of how illusory LLM productivity gains are, because we are overwhelmed with trivial proof-of-concepts that have no merit, not even the merit of a human having put effort into creating something neat, rather than actually interesting software anybody would try or discuss.

as1mov 9mo ago
Related that r/selfhosted has banned AI built projects except on Fridays[1] to keep up with the increased deluge of garbage, which are mostly built for CV padding rather than making anything useful for the community. https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1qfp2t0/mod_announcement_introducing_vibe_code_friday/ https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1qfp2t0/mod_ann...
sepositus 9mo ago
This is a valid observation. I wonder though if people who have been coding for decades, but choose to use AI assistance, would fall under the same AI slop category. It’s an interesting dilemma because the overwhelming amount of content getting posted just ends up breeding a ton of negative feelings towards any amount of AI usage.
- jacquesm 9mo ago
  It will if you let it. The number of times the AI has come up with 'I can write you 'x', 'y' or 'z' in a heartbeat, just say the word' and I keep on having to steer it back to the track of being a repository of knowledge rather than an overeager very junior co-worker that can't help themselves to want to show off their skills. It's very tiresome. Like an idiot/savant, they're an idiot most of the time and every 10th try you go 'oh, but that's neat and clever'.
CuriouslyC 9mo ago
Counterpoint: You won't admit anything generated with LLMs is good? I don't see any evidence of your fairness in your comment, so why should I consider you any differently than the angry dude at the bar complaining over his drinks about how things were in his day?
- anonymous908213 9mo ago
  > You won't admit anything generated with LLMs is good? Nowhere in my comment did I say this, so this is quite a non-sequitur you've based the following personal attack upon. Regardless of whether it's possible to use LLMs to generate good things, the vast majority of things generated with them are not good, and if the good things exist, they are being drowned out in a sea of spam, increasingly difficult to discover along with the good human-generated content. I have to say, I would characterise both your comment and the original comment I replied to as being considerably more "unfair" than mine. The first comment was clearly written in such a way to get a rise out of people. Your reply is directly insinuating that I'm out-of-touch and ranting at clouds.

7777777phil 9mo ago

I feel like HN is quite divided about that actually, A couple of days I started a survey which I plan to run monthly to see how the community feels about "LLM productivity etc". Now I have ~250 answers, need a couple more to make it significant but as of now it looks like >90% report productivity gains from AI tools - happy if you participate, only takes a minute: https://agentic-coding-survey.pages.dev/ https://agentic-coding-survey.pages.dev/

anonymous908213 9mo ago
Note that self-reporting productivity gains is a completely unreliable and unscientific metric. One study[1], small in scope but a noteworthy data point, found that over the course of the study that LLMs reduced productivity by ~20% but even after the fact the participants felt that on average their productivity had increased by ~20%. This study is surely not the end-all be-all and you could find ways to criticise it or say it doesn't apply or they were doing it wrong or whatever reason you think the developers should have had increased productivity, but the point is that people cannot accurately judge their own productivity by vibes alone. [1] https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/ https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
- 7777777phil 9mo ago
  If you look at the survey it's not only about productivity it's also about usage, model choice etc. But I agree with you self reported productivity gains is to be taken with a grain of salt. But then what else would you propose? The goal is to not only rely on benchmarks for model performance but develop some kind of TIOBE Index for LLMs.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    The ever-present rebuttal to all LLM failure anecdotes: you're using the wrong model, you're prompting it wrong, etc. All failures are always the user's fault. It couldn't possibly be that the tool is bad.

xyzsparetimexyz 9mo ago

It's slop disguised as productivity.

Semaphor 9mo ago

/r/selfhosted also got tons of new submissions, all unmaintainable AI slop. Now that they are only allowed on Fridays, it calmed down again. But I guess folks who insist on AI superiority think that’s a productivity gain.

CuriouslyC 9mo ago
The people spamming built bad stuff because they don't know any better. They would have built zero software without AI, so to the extent that anyone built anything working at all, it's basically an infinite productivity increase for those people.

Tade0 9mo ago

They are, but in the sense of net productivity gains. Responsible people who use their knowledge to review LLM-generated code will produce more - up to their maximum rate of taking responsibility. Irresponsible people will just smear shit all over the codebase. The jury is out what's the net effect and the agents' level of sophistication is a secondary factor.

jacquesm 9mo ago

AI productivity gains are not found in the slop bucket with projects tossed off after five prompts and zero intention of keeping them alive for the longer run.