4 ms·

I believe we will see a new huge wave of useful open source software. However don't expect the development model to stay the same. I was finally able to resurre

by antirez 8mo ago

I believe we will see a new huge wave of useful open source software. However don't expect the development model to stay the same. I was finally able to resurrect a few projects of mine, and many more will come. One incredible thing was the ability to easily merge what was worth merging from forks, for instance. The new OSS will be driven not much by the amount of code you can produce, but from the idea of software you have, how the software should look like, behave, what it should do to be useful. Today design is more important than coding.

koakuma-chan 8mo ago
I don't trust software that has .claude in its GitHub repo.
- echelon 8mo ago
  You won't have to ignore this stuff for long. Pretty soon it'll be mandatory to keep up. I've been a senior engineer doing large scale active-active, five nines distributed systems that process billions of dollars of transactions daily. These are well thought out systems with 20+ folks on design document reviews. Not all of the work falls into that category, though. There's so much plumbing and maintenance and wiring of new features and requirements. On that stuff, I'm getting ten times the amount of work done with AI than I was before. I could replace the juniors on my team with just myself if I needed to and still get all of our combined work done. Engineers using AI are going to replace anyone not using AI. In fact, now is the time to start a startup and "fire" all of these incumbent SaaS companies. You can make reasonable progress quickly and duplicate much of what many companies do without much effort. If you haven't tried this stuff, you need to. I'm not kidding. You will easily 10x your productivity. I'm not saying don't review your own code. Please do. But Claude emits reasonable Rust and Java and C++. It's not just for JavaScript toys anymore. - - - - - - - - - - - - Edit: Holy hell HN, downvoted to -4 in record time. Y'all don't like what's happening, but it's really happening. I'm not lying about this. I provided my background so you'd understand the context of my claims. I have a solid background in tech. The same thing that happened to illustration and art is happening here, to us and to our career. And these models are quite usable for production code. I can point Claude to a Rust HTTP handler and say, "using this example [file path], write a new endpoint that handles video file uploads, extracts the metadata, creates a thumbnail, uploads them to the cloud storage, and creates the relevant database records." And it does it in a minute. I review the code. It's as if I had written it. Maybe a change here or there. Real production Rust code, 100 - 500 LOC, one shotted in one minute. It even installs the routes and understands the HTTP framework DSL. It even codegens Swagger API documentation and somehow understands the proc macro DSL that takes Rust five minutes to compile. This tech is wizardry. It's the sci fi stuff we dreamed of as kids. I don't get the sour opinions. The only thing to fear is big tech monopolozation. I suppose the other thing to worry about is what's going to happen to our cushy $400k salaries. But if you make yourself useful, I think it'll work out just fine. Perhaps more than fine if you're able to leverage this to get ahead and fire your employer. You might not need your employer anymore. If you can do sales and wear many hats, you'll do exceedingly well. I'm not saying non-engineers will be able to do this. I'm saying engineers are well positioned to leverage this.
  - koakuma-chan 8mo ago
    I'm not saying that you shouldn't use AI. There was a submission to a blog post discussing applications of AI but it got killed for some reason. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750927 I remain convinced that if you use AI to write code then your product will sooner or later turn into a buggy mess. I think this will remain the case until they figure out how to make a proper memory system. Until then, we still have to use our brains as the memory system. One strategy I've seen that I like is using AI to prototype, but then write actual code yourself. This is what the Ghostty guy does I believe. I agree that AI can write decent Rust code, but Rust is not a panacea. From what I heard, Cursor has a lot of vibe-coded Rust code, but it didn't save it from being, as I said, a buggy mess.
    - bugglebeetle 8mo ago
      > I remain convinced that if you write code then your product will sooner or later turn into a buggy mess. FYFY
      - volkercraig 8mo ago
        Yeah the level of depraved code I've had contractors ask me to review... I don't think people realize how low the bar is.
  - blibble 8mo ago
    > I've been so not now, then?
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - jen20 8mo ago
      “I’ve been alive for fifty years” does not imply one is dead.
    - GuinansEyebrows 8mo ago
avaer 8mo ago
We need a new git. (could be built on the current git) > One incredible thing was the ability to easily merge what was worth merging from forks, for instance I agree, this is amazing, and really reduces the wasted effort. But it only works if you know what exists and where.
- forgotpwd16 8mo ago
  Jujutsu?
  - jdiff 8mo ago
    Jujutsu has been the tool that actually got me into making full use of version control software. Before, through multiple attempts at grasping at the deeper fundamentals, I only learned the bare minimum git commands I needed to make commits and branches, and very careful merges. Jujutsu maps to a much clearer and simpler mental model. Blockchains are nifty and all, but awfully inconvenient to work with as meatbags.
- mg74 8mo ago
  More we need a new GitHub.
  - pietro72ohboy 8mo ago
    May I recommend SourceHut (https://sr.ht/ https://sr.ht/)
    - reactordev 8mo ago
      Or codeberg (https://codeberg.org https://codeberg.org)
    - fc417fc802 8mo ago
      Or for those more inclined towards the original fully distributed spirit of git: https://radicle.xyz/ https://radicle.xyz/
  - 8mo ago
m000 8mo ago
The real question is how much of the new wave of vibe-coded software will be able to graduate from pet project to community-maintained project. It feels that vibe coding may exacerbate fragmentation (10 different vibe-coded packages for the same thing) and abandonment (made it in a weekend and left it to rot) for open source software.
- antirez 8mo ago
  I believe the process of accumulation of knowledge / fixes / interesting ideas will be still valid, so there will be a tons of small projects doing things that you can replicate and throw away, but the foundational libraries / tools will be still collaborative. But I don't agree with the idea of fragmentation, AI is very good at merging stuff from different branches, even when they diverged significantly.
  - vrighter 8mo ago
    What accumulation of knowledge? LLMs are marketed as "democratizing" (I hate this term) software development specifically by claiming to remove the need for knowledge. Software development hasn't been democratized. The term doesn't even make sense. Anyone could learn whatever using the same resources as anyone else. I would (and have, in the past) gladly teach anyone who asks me to. And most of my friends would too. The fact that non-devs couldn't write code was not because devs were gatekeeping, but because they didn't want to learn. And they still don't.

by antirez 8mo ago

koakuma-chan 8mo ago

I don't trust software that has .claude in its GitHub repo.

echelon 8mo ago
You won't have to ignore this stuff for long. Pretty soon it'll be mandatory to keep up. I've been a senior engineer doing large scale active-active, five nines distributed systems that process billions of dollars of transactions daily. These are well thought out systems with 20+ folks on design document reviews. Not all of the work falls into that category, though. There's so much plumbing and maintenance and wiring of new features and requirements. On that stuff, I'm getting ten times the amount of work done with AI than I was before. I could replace the juniors on my team with just myself if I needed to and still get all of our combined work done. Engineers using AI are going to replace anyone not using AI. In fact, now is the time to start a startup and "fire" all of these incumbent SaaS companies. You can make reasonable progress quickly and duplicate much of what many companies do without much effort. If you haven't tried this stuff, you need to. I'm not kidding. You will easily 10x your productivity. I'm not saying don't review your own code. Please do. But Claude emits reasonable Rust and Java and C++. It's not just for JavaScript toys anymore. - - - - - - - - - - - - Edit: Holy hell HN, downvoted to -4 in record time. Y'all don't like what's happening, but it's really happening. I'm not lying about this. I provided my background so you'd understand the context of my claims. I have a solid background in tech. The same thing that happened to illustration and art is happening here, to us and to our career. And these models are quite usable for production code. I can point Claude to a Rust HTTP handler and say, "using this example [file path], write a new endpoint that handles video file uploads, extracts the metadata, creates a thumbnail, uploads them to the cloud storage, and creates the relevant database records." And it does it in a minute. I review the code. It's as if I had written it. Maybe a change here or there. Real production Rust code, 100 - 500 LOC, one shotted in one minute. It even installs the routes and understands the HTTP framework DSL. It even codegens Swagger API documentation and somehow understands the proc macro DSL that takes Rust five minutes to compile. This tech is wizardry. It's the sci fi stuff we dreamed of as kids. I don't get the sour opinions. The only thing to fear is big tech monopolozation. I suppose the other thing to worry about is what's going to happen to our cushy $400k salaries. But if you make yourself useful, I think it'll work out just fine. Perhaps more than fine if you're able to leverage this to get ahead and fire your employer. You might not need your employer anymore. If you can do sales and wear many hats, you'll do exceedingly well. I'm not saying non-engineers will be able to do this. I'm saying engineers are well positioned to leverage this.
- koakuma-chan 8mo ago
  I'm not saying that you shouldn't use AI. There was a submission to a blog post discussing applications of AI but it got killed for some reason. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46750927 I remain convinced that if you use AI to write code then your product will sooner or later turn into a buggy mess. I think this will remain the case until they figure out how to make a proper memory system. Until then, we still have to use our brains as the memory system. One strategy I've seen that I like is using AI to prototype, but then write actual code yourself. This is what the Ghostty guy does I believe. I agree that AI can write decent Rust code, but Rust is not a panacea. From what I heard, Cursor has a lot of vibe-coded Rust code, but it didn't save it from being, as I said, a buggy mess.
  - bugglebeetle 8mo ago
    > I remain convinced that if you write code then your product will sooner or later turn into a buggy mess. FYFY
    - volkercraig 8mo ago
      Yeah the level of depraved code I've had contractors ask me to review... I don't think people realize how low the bar is.
- blibble 8mo ago
  > I've been so not now, then?
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jen20 8mo ago
    “I’ve been alive for fifty years” does not imply one is dead.
  - GuinansEyebrows 8mo ago

avaer 8mo ago

We need a new git. (could be built on the current git) > One incredible thing was the ability to easily merge what was worth merging from forks, for instance I agree, this is amazing, and really reduces the wasted effort. But it only works if you know what exists and where.

forgotpwd16 8mo ago
Jujutsu?
- jdiff 8mo ago
  Jujutsu has been the tool that actually got me into making full use of version control software. Before, through multiple attempts at grasping at the deeper fundamentals, I only learned the bare minimum git commands I needed to make commits and branches, and very careful merges. Jujutsu maps to a much clearer and simpler mental model. Blockchains are nifty and all, but awfully inconvenient to work with as meatbags.
mg74 8mo ago
More we need a new GitHub.
- pietro72ohboy 8mo ago
  May I recommend SourceHut (https://sr.ht/ https://sr.ht/)
  - reactordev 8mo ago
    Or codeberg (https://codeberg.org https://codeberg.org)
  - fc417fc802 8mo ago
    Or for those more inclined towards the original fully distributed spirit of git: https://radicle.xyz/ https://radicle.xyz/
- 8mo ago

m000 8mo ago

The real question is how much of the new wave of vibe-coded software will be able to graduate from pet project to community-maintained project. It feels that vibe coding may exacerbate fragmentation (10 different vibe-coded packages for the same thing) and abandonment (made it in a weekend and left it to rot) for open source software.

antirez 8mo ago
I believe the process of accumulation of knowledge / fixes / interesting ideas will be still valid, so there will be a tons of small projects doing things that you can replicate and throw away, but the foundational libraries / tools will be still collaborative. But I don't agree with the idea of fragmentation, AI is very good at merging stuff from different branches, even when they diverged significantly.
- vrighter 8mo ago
  What accumulation of knowledge? LLMs are marketed as "democratizing" (I hate this term) software development specifically by claiming to remove the need for knowledge. Software development hasn't been democratized. The term doesn't even make sense. Anyone could learn whatever using the same resources as anyone else. I would (and have, in the past) gladly teach anyone who asks me to. And most of my friends would too. The fact that non-devs couldn't write code was not because devs were gatekeeping, but because they didn't want to learn. And they still don't.