6 ms·

I expect most side-projects are being built with AI-assistance now. Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it

by simonw 7mo ago

I expect most side-projects are being built with AI-assistance now. Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? They're also the ideal place to try out new AI tools that your professional work might not let you experiment with. (The headline of this piece doesn't really do it justice - it misuses "vibe coded" and fails to communicate that the substance of the post is about visual design traits common with AI-generated frontends, which is a much more interesting conversation to be having. UPDATE: the headline changed, it's now much better - "Show HN submissions tripled and now mostly have the same vibe-coded look" - it was previously "Show HN submissions tripled and are now mostly vibe-coded")

tsukurimashou 7mo ago
> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? because I value the process of learning by doing
Oras 7mo ago
I agree. The problem is the noise ratio, not how the platform was implemented.
dematz 7mo ago
>if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it AI might (might not, but often does!) also save you from doing original thinking in the domain, which in a show my side project is what people are interested in
- simonw 7mo ago
  Sure... and it might also help you do more original thinking in that domain, and hence help you get a lot more learning value out of the time you have for those side projects. The trick is to deliberately use it in a way that helps you learn.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- DiscourseFan 7mo ago
  I don’t know if that’s true, I made a little web app for displaying the schedule for my team based on our billable hours, and I didn’t do any of the scripting myself but I did have to think a lot about what the app would do and what it would look like and what kind of functionality I wanted, tradeoffs between functionality and specific use cases, etc. It just made the scripting part go faster, that’s all.
  - Planktonne 7mo ago
    That's still less thinking overall that someone who thought about all of that and thought about the scripting would have done.
    - IanCal 7mo ago
      And even less than someone who wrote an interpreter for the script, less than someone who also chanted times tables while doing it. More thinking isn’t a simple good thing. Given a limit to how much thought I can give any specific task, adding extra work may mean less where it’s most useful.
      - Planktonne 7mo ago
        That's not a good-faith argument; obviously we're talking about relevant thought, rather than distraction (which, in context, would be less thought).
        IanCal 7mo ago
        It is a good faith argument, my point is exactly that the actual scripting was not part of the relevant thought any more than the interpreter would have been.
  - eddieroger 7mo ago
    That adds up over time, though, and it works in reverse. AI will always be able to read and write faster than a person can. You may be able to write the script, but in the time it would take to /literally/ write it, you're on to the next thing. And if that script is actually a feature that spans two or three or 10 files, now you're really cooking.
- JoelMcCracken 7mo ago
  Why I like using AI right now is that I get to try out far more of my own ideas quickly (and find issues with them!) Before, it was like: "Oh, X idea is really cool, let me try it!" ... (loses interest before idea validated) Now: "Oh, X idea is really cool, let me try it!" ... with AI, I get to actually validate that it works (ideally), or reformulate the idea if it doesn't.
  - locknitpicker 7mo ago
    > Why I like using AI right now is that I get to try out far more of my own ideas quickly (and find issues with them!) This. Coding assistants handle a great deal of the drudge work involved in refactoring. I find myself doing far more deep refactoring work as quick proofs of concept than before. It's also quite convenient to have coding assistants handle troubleshooting steps for you.
  - criley2 7mo ago
    Even more than validating ideas, I think my personal AI use falls into two categories: - Exploration: I am "vibe coding" to explore a domain, add many features, refactor the app over and over, as a real time exploration of the domain to see what works and what doesn't - Specific Execution: I have a full design, a full idea, I've thought about architecture, we're making a plan and we're executing this extremely coherent vision I've enjoyed using AI for both cases.
    - 8note 7mo ago
      i particularly like that right now i get to hear about different small practices people do that arent the AI itself, but that i wouldnt have considered otherwise. git worktrees as an example.
- gf000 7mo ago
  But I might want some cool original project with a boring but working web UI, so that other people can actually try out what I have created.
  - dematz 7mo ago
    For sure, I'm doing something very similar, asking an AI to make a boring but working web app using an API I'm working on. The API is the interesting part and the web app is basically just to test it. I do think though if I were to delegate the API itself to AI and say something like the code doesn't matter, the high level thinking would suffer from lack of pain working through implementation details.
- TaupeRanger 7mo ago
  Not likely. Original thinking in a "side project" is almost never about the code itself, but the ideas and end product implementation. You might be able to invent things like Carmack's BSP implementation, Torvald's Content Addressable Storage, etc. but even things like that can be aided by LLMs at this point, at least in the prototyping/idea phases. AI doesn't prevent you from having good ideas or doing original thinking if that is your goal.
shagie 7mo ago
On the visual design traits... I'm primarily a backend developer. Most of my work has been in serving json or occasionally xml. Spring Shell in Java is something that I'm closer to working with than a GUI. When I've done web work, the most complimentary thing that was said about my design is "spartan". So, if I was to have a web facing personal project... would black text on a white background with the default font and clunky <form> elements be ok? I know we are ok with it on the HN Settings page. They work... but they don't meet what I perceive other people have as minimum standards for web facing interfaces today. And so... if I was to have some web facing project that I wanted to show to others, I'd probably work with some AI tooling to help create a gui, and it would very likely have the visual design traits that other AI generated front ends have.
- duskdozer 7mo ago
  I wish more people would just ship the spartan version. Even if they want to have a "modern" one too. I'm tired of the internet being slower than it was 20 years ago despite massively improved network and hardware capability.
sdevonoes 7mo ago
For me it wouldn’t make sense to use ai. Like I work on personal projects because they are fun: it’s fun to think about a problem, to solve it, to implement a solution, to learn new things and to fantasise about what if it gets popular and useful. If I can use AI to flip my fingers and make it happen, well wheres the fun? I have my day to day job to use AI for mundane things Besides, the idea of paying 200$/month to have the privilege of using ai in my side projects… it’s just stupid for me
- philipwhiuk 7mo ago
  The one caveat I have with this is that the underlying project might be fun but the website/write-up might be a chore. Hence AI for the chore bit. I don't think this is overwhelmingly the reason though - I think many are just all AI, but if the project is technically interesting it might be sufficient to get me to grimace through it.
- 6r17 7mo ago
  Fun is not always about finding up the exact look or design of something - you might be having it for your own particular reason - and by the time a website has to present it might have shifted already. That's why these land and why we might be confused about the process
- toyg 7mo ago
  Personally, I'm using side projects to test what a basic agentic setup can achieve, i.e. not paying for anything but the electricity bill. Reaching that state is the real side project. (I've not landed on a good solution yet, ollama+opencode kinda works but there are often problems with parsing output and abrupt terminations - I'm sure some of it is the models, some the config, some my pitiful rtx 5090 16gb, and some are just bugs...)
- yard2010 7mo ago
  It doesn't have to be like this. For me one 20$ acc with another one for backup I rarely use, is more than enough. I leverage this tool simply as a typist - it can't think so it mustn't, it can't architect since it's merely a "guess the next word" game with many extra steps, but boy can it type fast. I just make sure it types exactly what I would have typed and nothing else, this way I get to enjoy both worlds - improve my throughput and not produce slop.
vunderba 7mo ago
My biggest issue with LLM‑assisted webpages (Claude Code is especially egregious) is the lack of respect for basic web content accessibility guidelines. The number of dark‑mode sites I’ve seen where the text (and subtext) are various shades of dark brown or beige is just awful. For reference, you want a contrast ratio between the text and background of at least ~4:1 to be on the safe side. This isn't even that hard to fix - hell you can add the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to a skill. https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker
- slibhb 7mo ago
  Just chiming in to say I don't care at all about accessibility and I find it bewildering that every thread sharing some project has a comment like this.
  - TimedToasts 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - ioseph 7mo ago
      How do you feel arriving at someone's house and there's no railings on the stairs? Even if it doesn't affect you (yet) it's unprofessional. We can do better
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
  - nottorp 7mo ago
    That's until you want to fill a form and find out it's dark grey text on a different dark grey background so you don't see what you're typing even with 20/20 sight :)
  - corndoge 7mo ago
    > I find it bewildering that every thread sharing some project has a comment like this. Those of us who care that technology be accessible to as many people as possible, such as low vision users, find it relevant. You can ignore it if you wish.
hubraumhugo 7mo ago
Appreciate the feedback, just updated the title to be more clear.
acedTrex 7mo ago
This fact, which i do believe to be true, has completely killed my interest in almost all of other peoples projects. My interest in a project has always been rooted in the idea that its interesting to see other knowledgable people or people learning to attack a problem for themselves. I have really never cared about the "thing that it does." I liked reading the code, dissecting attempts and really learning about the person that wrote it through their line by line decisions. That is now all gone. The "noise ratio" of slop projects which have none of the previously interesting thought and intentionality have drowned out the "rigorous projects." It's actually very sad for me, it was something I previously really enjoyed. I am looking for a board that aggregates projects that still have that interesting "human factor" i would subscribe in a heartbeat.
moralestapia 7mo ago
I've been coding for 20 years now, almost every single afternoon. I've never met someone who has spent more time coding than me (although for sure such people exist). I love writing code, I consider it an art form. I don't mind spending days optimizing a function until the code is beautiful (at least to me). I also have dozens of projects in mind that I don't have time to go through; cue the meme of "I bought another domain that will sit empty for years", I have like 60 of those right now. AI assistance/vibecoding, whatever you call it, has been a massive win for me because now I can sketch out those projects in a weekend, put them out and then, if I decide they're worth spending more time on, tradcode the parts that I really care about. As it is for many others, AI is another tool in my toolbox. It's the pencil and paper I use to draft stuff. It's tricky because I do get that we all want to get rid of low-value AI slop, but also, it wouldn't be fair to me, and people like me, to have authentic projects discredited just because you used AI in the creative process; not just as part of it, but perhaps even to write ALL of the code. And then, why would that be a bad thing? What difference does it make if it was me writing functionally identical code letter-by-letter instead of writing a comprehensive prompt and guiding AI to do as I wish?
- deleted 7mo ago
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layer8 7mo ago
> Side projects are typically time constrained What is the urgency in completing side projects? Commercial projects are usually the ones where you have some urgency.
- simonw 7mo ago
  If you only have a few hours a week and you want to actually finish a project the speed with which you can build is extremely important.
  - layer8 7mo ago
    Only if you think finishing your side-projects is extremely important.
norir 7mo ago
I also expect that most side projects that are made with ai end up abandoned within 3 months and contribute next to nothing to the user's personal development and that the use of ai prevented them from the kind of deliberate practice that could have led to durable skill growth which ultimately will lead to much better work (side or main projects).
nothinkjustai 7mo ago
> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? Because generally speaking, stuff that is AI generated is largely devoid of value. If it’s AI generated anyone can prompt it into existence, so the likely hood that someone will find value in and use what you made is approximately zero. What you made is likely low quality, since you vibe coded it with little effort and that always shows. Lastly you don’t even get to experience the joy of solving problems yourself or the pride of having built something with your own skill. Using some AI to build something is fine, it’s when it’s used so much that it’s immediately obvious on the packaging - the show hn post, the readme, the code itself.
- all2 7mo ago
  I've found that value is largely derived from polish and vision. It's easy to prompt some stuff into existence over a weekend. It is hard to polish it, fix bugs, have tidy UX, and so on. There's this meme going around (maybe from that Silicon Valley show?) where the grey-beard says he is valued for his taste and his conviction in that taste. This is -- fortunately or not -- reality. Vision and taste won't get you the whole way, but they are a huge part of the equation. This is why Apple, for example, was so successful under Jobs: he had vision, and he had good taste.
  - nothinkjustai 7mo ago
    I agree, and for those who would counter “just use AI to polish”, those who use AI to avoid doing the work of building something are likewise going to avoid doing the work to polish it, if they even possess the taste required to do so.
kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 7mo ago
It depends on the project, I think. If your side project is a thing you hope it will make you a millionaire, sure, AI all the way. But if your side project is a just a cool thing or a learning experience, I would say the exact opposite. I would expect $JOB to be very time-constrained and vibecoding-friendly (maybe even too friendly) whereas your side-project should be all artisanal free-range code.
glimshe 7mo ago
If AI saves you time, why not use it on your main projects too? All other things equal, should users care about whether AI was used?
maplethorpe 7mo ago
> Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? It depends what your goals are. All of my side projects were started because I wanted to learn something. Using a "skip to the end" button wouldn't really make sense for me.
- bluefirebrand 7mo ago
  The difference between people who want to learn things versus people who just want a finished product is going to be a big dividing line in the post AI world
  - tomtomdesign 7mo ago
    It's also a nice opportunity to learn while getting something out!
  - fragmede 7mo ago
    Learn what though? Is knowing CSS at all relevant to making a site all about, say, every type of cheese? If I have, say, 6 hours to build that site, does learning about CSS make the site better, or does learnin about the history of rennet make the site better? The assumption that using AI to replace learning about CSS is replaced by being a drooling moron with the time saved instead, is unfounded. The AI is a fountain of knowledge (that you have to double check). That people choose to not to learn about topics they don't find interesting because they'd rather learn about topics they do find interesting, doesn't automatically make them dumber than you.
    - latexr 7mo ago
      > If I have, say, 6 hours to build that site Then chances are it’ll be subpar either way. Every type of cheese, in six hours? The CSS isn’t the bottleneck there, it’s information hierarchy and the information itself. You can’t possibly learn about the history of cheeses and summarise it and organise it for a website in that amount of time. Writing the website code isn’t the lengthy part. > That people choose to not to learn about topics they don't find interesting because they'd rather learn about topics they do find interesting, doesn't automatically make them dumber than you. Why so rough? I don’t see any judgement of character or intelligence in the comment you’re replying to.
JohnFen 7mo ago
> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? I wouldn't use it because one of the reasons that I do side projects is to enjoy myself and learn new things, and these tools tend to do much of the stuff that I enjoy and learn from.
- theshrike79 7mo ago
  So you _never_ do side projects to solve a problem? It's always about learning and enjoyment, it doesn't matter how long it takes?
gib444 7mo ago
> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it Getting a McDonald's saves time too
strogonoff 7mo ago
I don’t expect most side-projects to be built with LLMs now. I would expect LLM uptake to be higher in the workplace (where it’s mandatory and/or people operate on the “the ends justify the means” paradigm), but outside of that there’s a higher likelihood someone is doing it because they enjoy programming and problem-solving as a process, and why outsource something you like to a black box that will regurgitate you an average of volunteer contributions (often non-consensually obtained) for some corporation’s profit?
keybored 7mo ago
> I expect most side-projects are being built with AI-assistance now. Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? Why would you put forth anything but this line? The only side projects I do is contributing to an existing project. You can’t use AI for it because of provenance matters. But why would I want to? I want to program. For private side projects this makes sense if you want the outcome more than the process. But even then I am skeptical. There is the benign effect of learning things: the more you know the more you desire to to know because you get more and more aware of the infinite horizon of not-knowing. I haven’t experienced this myself for “building”, but based on anecdotes I’m not psyched about the psychological profile of getting everything for free (in terms of programming). Some people seem to get manic about it. What’s the point of realizing your desires if that just means producing more of them? And the key to satiating that unsatiable desire is to put tokens into the alienation machine. For side projects that you publicize (show hn) this makes less sense. There is a freaking glut of “I built this” with the predictable feedback around the Net, in these times: why the F would I take the time to test what you have “built” when I can “build” the same thing and get exactly what I want?
thih9 7mo ago
> Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? There could be many reasons to not use ai in a case like this, eg: retaining more control, breaking some new ground, because it’s fun, because it’s personal, etc.
deleted 7mo ago
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changyou 7mo ago
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shafyy 7mo ago
> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it Ethical concerns, environmental concerns, political concerns and legal concerns.
- ramon156 7mo ago
  On top of that, if any brainlet with an LLM can build it, why bother? Does your idea stand out? Then AI can get ~50% done, and you still have to fill in the gaps. People who do that right will not look very LLM-assisted unless you dig through the commits. That's how it should be done, imo.
jimmypk 7mo ago
[flagged]

by simonw 7mo ago

tsukurimashou 7mo ago

> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? because I value the process of learning by doing

Oras 7mo ago

I agree. The problem is the noise ratio, not how the platform was implemented.

dematz 7mo ago

>if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it AI might (might not, but often does!) also save you from doing original thinking in the domain, which in a show my side project is what people are interested in

simonw 7mo ago
Sure... and it might also help you do more original thinking in that domain, and hence help you get a lot more learning value out of the time you have for those side projects. The trick is to deliberately use it in a way that helps you learn.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
DiscourseFan 7mo ago
I don’t know if that’s true, I made a little web app for displaying the schedule for my team based on our billable hours, and I didn’t do any of the scripting myself but I did have to think a lot about what the app would do and what it would look like and what kind of functionality I wanted, tradeoffs between functionality and specific use cases, etc. It just made the scripting part go faster, that’s all.
- Planktonne 7mo ago
  That's still less thinking overall that someone who thought about all of that and thought about the scripting would have done.
  - IanCal 7mo ago
    And even less than someone who wrote an interpreter for the script, less than someone who also chanted times tables while doing it. More thinking isn’t a simple good thing. Given a limit to how much thought I can give any specific task, adding extra work may mean less where it’s most useful.
    - Planktonne 7mo ago
      That's not a good-faith argument; obviously we're talking about relevant thought, rather than distraction (which, in context, would be less thought).
      - IanCal 7mo ago
        It is a good faith argument, my point is exactly that the actual scripting was not part of the relevant thought any more than the interpreter would have been.
- eddieroger 7mo ago
  That adds up over time, though, and it works in reverse. AI will always be able to read and write faster than a person can. You may be able to write the script, but in the time it would take to /literally/ write it, you're on to the next thing. And if that script is actually a feature that spans two or three or 10 files, now you're really cooking.
JoelMcCracken 7mo ago
Why I like using AI right now is that I get to try out far more of my own ideas quickly (and find issues with them!) Before, it was like: "Oh, X idea is really cool, let me try it!" ... (loses interest before idea validated) Now: "Oh, X idea is really cool, let me try it!" ... with AI, I get to actually validate that it works (ideally), or reformulate the idea if it doesn't.
- locknitpicker 7mo ago
  > Why I like using AI right now is that I get to try out far more of my own ideas quickly (and find issues with them!) This. Coding assistants handle a great deal of the drudge work involved in refactoring. I find myself doing far more deep refactoring work as quick proofs of concept than before. It's also quite convenient to have coding assistants handle troubleshooting steps for you.
- criley2 7mo ago
  Even more than validating ideas, I think my personal AI use falls into two categories: - Exploration: I am "vibe coding" to explore a domain, add many features, refactor the app over and over, as a real time exploration of the domain to see what works and what doesn't - Specific Execution: I have a full design, a full idea, I've thought about architecture, we're making a plan and we're executing this extremely coherent vision I've enjoyed using AI for both cases.
  - 8note 7mo ago
    i particularly like that right now i get to hear about different small practices people do that arent the AI itself, but that i wouldnt have considered otherwise. git worktrees as an example.
gf000 7mo ago
But I might want some cool original project with a boring but working web UI, so that other people can actually try out what I have created.
- dematz 7mo ago
  For sure, I'm doing something very similar, asking an AI to make a boring but working web app using an API I'm working on. The API is the interesting part and the web app is basically just to test it. I do think though if I were to delegate the API itself to AI and say something like the code doesn't matter, the high level thinking would suffer from lack of pain working through implementation details.
TaupeRanger 7mo ago
Not likely. Original thinking in a "side project" is almost never about the code itself, but the ideas and end product implementation. You might be able to invent things like Carmack's BSP implementation, Torvald's Content Addressable Storage, etc. but even things like that can be aided by LLMs at this point, at least in the prototyping/idea phases. AI doesn't prevent you from having good ideas or doing original thinking if that is your goal.

shagie 7mo ago

On the visual design traits... I'm primarily a backend developer. Most of my work has been in serving json or occasionally xml. Spring Shell in Java is something that I'm closer to working with than a GUI. When I've done web work, the most complimentary thing that was said about my design is "spartan". So, if I was to have a web facing personal project... would black text on a white background with the default font and clunky <form> elements be ok? I know we are ok with it on the HN Settings page. They work... but they don't meet what I perceive other people have as minimum standards for web facing interfaces today. And so... if I was to have some web facing project that I wanted to show to others, I'd probably work with some AI tooling to help create a gui, and it would very likely have the visual design traits that other AI generated front ends have.

duskdozer 7mo ago
I wish more people would just ship the spartan version. Even if they want to have a "modern" one too. I'm tired of the internet being slower than it was 20 years ago despite massively improved network and hardware capability.

sdevonoes 7mo ago

For me it wouldn’t make sense to use ai. Like I work on personal projects because they are fun: it’s fun to think about a problem, to solve it, to implement a solution, to learn new things and to fantasise about what if it gets popular and useful. If I can use AI to flip my fingers and make it happen, well wheres the fun? I have my day to day job to use AI for mundane things Besides, the idea of paying 200$/month to have the privilege of using ai in my side projects… it’s just stupid for me

philipwhiuk 7mo ago
The one caveat I have with this is that the underlying project might be fun but the website/write-up might be a chore. Hence AI for the chore bit. I don't think this is overwhelmingly the reason though - I think many are just all AI, but if the project is technically interesting it might be sufficient to get me to grimace through it.
6r17 7mo ago
Fun is not always about finding up the exact look or design of something - you might be having it for your own particular reason - and by the time a website has to present it might have shifted already. That's why these land and why we might be confused about the process
toyg 7mo ago
Personally, I'm using side projects to test what a basic agentic setup can achieve, i.e. not paying for anything but the electricity bill. Reaching that state is the real side project. (I've not landed on a good solution yet, ollama+opencode kinda works but there are often problems with parsing output and abrupt terminations - I'm sure some of it is the models, some the config, some my pitiful rtx 5090 16gb, and some are just bugs...)
yard2010 7mo ago
It doesn't have to be like this. For me one 20$ acc with another one for backup I rarely use, is more than enough. I leverage this tool simply as a typist - it can't think so it mustn't, it can't architect since it's merely a "guess the next word" game with many extra steps, but boy can it type fast. I just make sure it types exactly what I would have typed and nothing else, this way I get to enjoy both worlds - improve my throughput and not produce slop.

vunderba 7mo ago

My biggest issue with LLM‑assisted webpages (Claude Code is especially egregious) is the lack of respect for basic web content accessibility guidelines. The number of dark‑mode sites I’ve seen where the text (and subtext) are various shades of dark brown or beige is just awful. For reference, you want a contrast ratio between the text and background of at least ~4:1 to be on the safe side. This isn't even that hard to fix - hell you can add the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to a skill. https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker

slibhb 7mo ago
Just chiming in to say I don't care at all about accessibility and I find it bewildering that every thread sharing some project has a comment like this.
- TimedToasts 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ioseph 7mo ago
    How do you feel arriving at someone's house and there's no railings on the stairs? Even if it doesn't affect you (yet) it's unprofessional. We can do better
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- nottorp 7mo ago
  That's until you want to fill a form and find out it's dark grey text on a different dark grey background so you don't see what you're typing even with 20/20 sight :)
- corndoge 7mo ago
  > I find it bewildering that every thread sharing some project has a comment like this. Those of us who care that technology be accessible to as many people as possible, such as low vision users, find it relevant. You can ignore it if you wish.

hubraumhugo 7mo ago

Appreciate the feedback, just updated the title to be more clear.

acedTrex 7mo ago

This fact, which i do believe to be true, has completely killed my interest in almost all of other peoples projects. My interest in a project has always been rooted in the idea that its interesting to see other knowledgable people or people learning to attack a problem for themselves. I have really never cared about the "thing that it does." I liked reading the code, dissecting attempts and really learning about the person that wrote it through their line by line decisions. That is now all gone. The "noise ratio" of slop projects which have none of the previously interesting thought and intentionality have drowned out the "rigorous projects." It's actually very sad for me, it was something I previously really enjoyed. I am looking for a board that aggregates projects that still have that interesting "human factor" i would subscribe in a heartbeat.

moralestapia 7mo ago

I've been coding for 20 years now, almost every single afternoon. I've never met someone who has spent more time coding than me (although for sure such people exist). I love writing code, I consider it an art form. I don't mind spending days optimizing a function until the code is beautiful (at least to me). I also have dozens of projects in mind that I don't have time to go through; cue the meme of "I bought another domain that will sit empty for years", I have like 60 of those right now. AI assistance/vibecoding, whatever you call it, has been a massive win for me because now I can sketch out those projects in a weekend, put them out and then, if I decide they're worth spending more time on, tradcode the parts that I really care about. As it is for many others, AI is another tool in my toolbox. It's the pencil and paper I use to draft stuff. It's tricky because I do get that we all want to get rid of low-value AI slop, but also, it wouldn't be fair to me, and people like me, to have authentic projects discredited just because you used AI in the creative process; not just as part of it, but perhaps even to write ALL of the code. And then, why would that be a bad thing? What difference does it make if it was me writing functionally identical code letter-by-letter instead of writing a comprehensive prompt and guiding AI to do as I wish?

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

layer8 7mo ago

> Side projects are typically time constrained What is the urgency in completing side projects? Commercial projects are usually the ones where you have some urgency.

simonw 7mo ago
If you only have a few hours a week and you want to actually finish a project the speed with which you can build is extremely important.
- layer8 7mo ago
  Only if you think finishing your side-projects is extremely important.

norir 7mo ago

I also expect that most side projects that are made with ai end up abandoned within 3 months and contribute next to nothing to the user's personal development and that the use of ai prevented them from the kind of deliberate practice that could have led to durable skill growth which ultimately will lead to much better work (side or main projects).

nothinkjustai 7mo ago

> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? Because generally speaking, stuff that is AI generated is largely devoid of value. If it’s AI generated anyone can prompt it into existence, so the likely hood that someone will find value in and use what you made is approximately zero. What you made is likely low quality, since you vibe coded it with little effort and that always shows. Lastly you don’t even get to experience the joy of solving problems yourself or the pride of having built something with your own skill. Using some AI to build something is fine, it’s when it’s used so much that it’s immediately obvious on the packaging - the show hn post, the readme, the code itself.

all2 7mo ago
I've found that value is largely derived from polish and vision. It's easy to prompt some stuff into existence over a weekend. It is hard to polish it, fix bugs, have tidy UX, and so on. There's this meme going around (maybe from that Silicon Valley show?) where the grey-beard says he is valued for his taste and his conviction in that taste. This is -- fortunately or not -- reality. Vision and taste won't get you the whole way, but they are a huge part of the equation. This is why Apple, for example, was so successful under Jobs: he had vision, and he had good taste.
- nothinkjustai 7mo ago
  I agree, and for those who would counter “just use AI to polish”, those who use AI to avoid doing the work of building something are likewise going to avoid doing the work to polish it, if they even possess the taste required to do so.

kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 7mo ago

It depends on the project, I think. If your side project is a thing you hope it will make you a millionaire, sure, AI all the way. But if your side project is a just a cool thing or a learning experience, I would say the exact opposite. I would expect $JOB to be very time-constrained and vibecoding-friendly (maybe even too friendly) whereas your side-project should be all artisanal free-range code.

glimshe 7mo ago

If AI saves you time, why not use it on your main projects too? All other things equal, should users care about whether AI was used?

maplethorpe 7mo ago

> Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? It depends what your goals are. All of my side projects were started because I wanted to learn something. Using a "skip to the end" button wouldn't really make sense for me.

bluefirebrand 7mo ago
The difference between people who want to learn things versus people who just want a finished product is going to be a big dividing line in the post AI world
- tomtomdesign 7mo ago
  It's also a nice opportunity to learn while getting something out!
- fragmede 7mo ago
  Learn what though? Is knowing CSS at all relevant to making a site all about, say, every type of cheese? If I have, say, 6 hours to build that site, does learning about CSS make the site better, or does learnin about the history of rennet make the site better? The assumption that using AI to replace learning about CSS is replaced by being a drooling moron with the time saved instead, is unfounded. The AI is a fountain of knowledge (that you have to double check). That people choose to not to learn about topics they don't find interesting because they'd rather learn about topics they do find interesting, doesn't automatically make them dumber than you.
  - latexr 7mo ago
    > If I have, say, 6 hours to build that site Then chances are it’ll be subpar either way. Every type of cheese, in six hours? The CSS isn’t the bottleneck there, it’s information hierarchy and the information itself. You can’t possibly learn about the history of cheeses and summarise it and organise it for a website in that amount of time. Writing the website code isn’t the lengthy part. > That people choose to not to learn about topics they don't find interesting because they'd rather learn about topics they do find interesting, doesn't automatically make them dumber than you. Why so rough? I don’t see any judgement of character or intelligence in the comment you’re replying to.

JohnFen 7mo ago

> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? I wouldn't use it because one of the reasons that I do side projects is to enjoy myself and learn new things, and these tools tend to do much of the stuff that I enjoy and learn from.

theshrike79 7mo ago
So you _never_ do side projects to solve a problem? It's always about learning and enjoyment, it doesn't matter how long it takes?

gib444 7mo ago

> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it Getting a McDonald's saves time too

strogonoff 7mo ago

I don’t expect most side-projects to be built with LLMs now. I would expect LLM uptake to be higher in the workplace (where it’s mandatory and/or people operate on the “the ends justify the means” paradigm), but outside of that there’s a higher likelihood someone is doing it because they enjoy programming and problem-solving as a process, and why outsource something you like to a black box that will regurgitate you an average of volunteer contributions (often non-consensually obtained) for some corporation’s profit?

keybored 7mo ago

> I expect most side-projects are being built with AI-assistance now. Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? Why would you put forth anything but this line? The only side projects I do is contributing to an existing project. You can’t use AI for it because of provenance matters. But why would I want to? I want to program. For private side projects this makes sense if you want the outcome more than the process. But even then I am skeptical. There is the benign effect of learning things: the more you know the more you desire to to know because you get more and more aware of the infinite horizon of not-knowing. I haven’t experienced this myself for “building”, but based on anecdotes I’m not psyched about the psychological profile of getting everything for free (in terms of programming). Some people seem to get manic about it. What’s the point of realizing your desires if that just means producing more of them? And the key to satiating that unsatiable desire is to put tokens into the alienation machine. For side projects that you publicize (show hn) this makes less sense. There is a freaking glut of “I built this” with the predictable feedback around the Net, in these times: why the F would I take the time to test what you have “built” when I can “build” the same thing and get exactly what I want?

thih9 7mo ago

> Side projects are typically time constrained - if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it? There could be many reasons to not use ai in a case like this, eg: retaining more control, breaking some new ground, because it’s fun, because it’s personal, etc.

deleted 7mo ago

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changyou 7mo ago

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shafyy 7mo ago

> if AI saves you time, why wouldn't you use it Ethical concerns, environmental concerns, political concerns and legal concerns.

ramon156 7mo ago
On top of that, if any brainlet with an LLM can build it, why bother? Does your idea stand out? Then AI can get ~50% done, and you still have to fill in the gaps. People who do that right will not look very LLM-assisted unless you dig through the commits. That's how it should be done, imo.

jimmypk 7mo ago

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