4 ms·

I think it was in these forums where I first read that you can gauge AI progress by the velocity at which people move the goalposts.

sieiw 5mo ago
Right. So how long do we have to wait? The reality is the actual output doesn’t match the hype at all. Software engineers should be getting laid off all over the place, there should be a decrease in hiring period. This is not what’s happening.
- user34283 5mo ago
  Let's see at the end of the year how that went with the supposedly disappointing actual output and no layoffs.
  - grey-area 5mo ago
    Sure, let’s see. So far there is nothing to justify the hype, and there is a lot of money and hype around this, and a lot of fervent true believers.
    - user34283 5mo ago
      I am working like 20 hours a week on my new iOS app with Codex. People on here talk like it was some belief or suggest I am somehow profiting from "hyping" AI. Is it so hard to believe that agentic coding now works? Engineers are taking it up left and right. Edit with reply: I can't, because the app is still in the works. Also my HN account is again rate limited and I won't be able to post more comments. Edit number two to the other comment: It's not really that expensive. With Anthropic it would be $200, with Codex the $100 subscription is sufficient. It is interesting phrasing when you say that the providers "are making me think" the use of their service would be better, rather than me reaching this conclusion myself after using their services extensively for my work. And honestly, I think I've had it with HN. I can't even participate properly in the discussion, maybe because some moderator thought my comments and opinions unworthy again.
      - throwaway2037 5mo ago
        Can you share a link to your app?
        philote 5mo ago
        I recently had a coworker open my eyes to why vibe coding, or AI-assisted coding is so popular. He likened it to a slot machine, where pulling the slot's arm is like asking an LLM to code something. You get crap most of the time, but when it works, it's like getting a payout. That dopamine hit keeps them pulling, hoping for another hit, and they then believe it's a better way to develop software.
        sph 5mo ago
        Oh that’s definitely it. Even Steve Yegge mad with vibecoded powers has said it feels a lot like gambling. I wouldn’t trust the judgment of gamblers talking about their ‘winnings’, so to speak.
        user34283 5mo ago
        The difference is that you don't just pull again. You guide the originally mediocre result towards a good outcome by providing feedback and potentially technical insights. That's not a gamble, it works reliably enough.
      - sillysaurusx 5mo ago
        Hey, rate limits are incredibly frustrating, but contributing to HN is worth it. Try writing a polite, brief email to hn@ycombinator.com with a link to your user profile. Tell them that you’ve re-read the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and that you’re willing to follow them. Then ask if it would be possible for the rate limit to be removed. My gut reaction looking over your account is that you mean well but get a little heated. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48147587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48147587 responds to no one in particular and calls HN drivel. Don’t do that. Thoughts like that are normal, but expressing them is difficult to do in a substantive way. It’s often better to not say anything if you feel yourself getting upset. (There are plenty of exceptions to this, but you have to do it in a way where you’re writing for the audience here, not for yourself.) I think if you really put your mind to it, you can write substantively and stay off the rate limit list. Good luck.
    - seszett 5mo ago
      > People on here talk like it was some belief or suggest I am somehow profiting from "hyping" AI. Not really, the "people on here" rather consider that Anthropic and co. are profiting from you by making you think it's better to give them money to develop your app rather than do it yourself or hire a developer. The hype is there to steer you towards AI. 20 hours a week must be quite expensive in tokens.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - lomase 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - hypeatei 5mo ago
    Companies are forward looking, they wouldn't wait until the end of the year if LLMs were truly as disruptive as AI believers are saying.
- Traubenfuchs 5mo ago
  ...and ultra high velocity single human person agent swarm vibe coded replacements for existing software and SaaS should come out en masse. Where are they?
  - sieiw 5mo ago
    In b4 agents have been shit up until a month ago. There hasn’t been much time yet!!
    - user34283 5mo ago
      This is pretty much true. Before Codex with GPT 5.4 and 5.5 I was working on a single feature only, no parallel conversations, and a ton of permission prompts would make it impossible for the agent to even work for five minutes on its own. Times have changed.
      - sieiw 5mo ago
        People like you write a whole lot. Talk about the numbers. Cost reduction and revenue generation. Anything else irrelevant - nobody cares. The world is about making money and moving things forward.
        user34283 5mo ago
        I hope to publish my app in a month or two, after sufficient polish, market research, and App Store optimization. As I said, it's not exactly realistic to ask for numbers and a Photoshop competitor within two months.
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
  - user34283 5mo ago
    I understand Codex had 500k weekly users at the beginning of the year, now they have 4M. GPT 5.4 came out at the start of March, GPT 5.5 end of April. What do you expect, that we all go to market with a Photoshop competitor within two months? Edit: and I can't provide any more replies since once again some automatic system or a mod rate limited my account for whatever reason.
- theshrike79 5mo ago
  I've personally recreated two applications with 100% vibe engineering, now I'm saving about 100€/year - forever. Dunno if the companies whose product subscriptions I've cancelled will fire people because of it though. Maybe eventually?
sph 5mo ago
Funny how that works both ways. "I am 100x productive with AI, I can ship in days what took months before" and "oh no, you don't understand, it's not really possible to vibecode Photoshop" found elsewhere in this thread. If I were magically 100x productive, the first thing I would do would be to recreate Photoshop.
- bensyverson 5mo ago
  Can I ask why? Specifically, why Photoshop and not Canva, or Figma, or Lightroom? I ask because Photoshop probably wouldn’t have a market if it was introduced in 2026. What would you be hoping to accomplish by recreating Photoshop?
  - techpression 5mo ago
    Do you use Photoshop? The underlying engine which gives support for layers and smart objects is in itself such an amazing piece of tech that nobody seems to get even close to (and I’ve tried them all). The brush engine is fantastic, liquify and the general support for plugins, and heck, just the basic math behind the filters. Canva and Figma are layout tools, not for pixel editing. Recreating it would make it faster and cheaper, something that has been driving software for decades.
    - bensyverson 5mo ago
      I'm not being argumentative; I was genuinely trying to understand why you would aim to recreate Photoshop in particular, because Photoshop includes such a huge range of functionality. If it's about recreating the brush engine, that's pretty achievable. I would be curious to learn why Krita is not enough though. Context: I've developed multiple Photoshop file format parsers/writers and know Photoshop at a very deep level. And would never want to replicate the specific set of tradeoffs Adobe made in the 1980s.
      - techpression 5mo ago
        That’s fair, it’s just that a lot of the functionality overlaps in very rewarding ways, even if you only use the overlap 5% it’s incredibly frustrating to not have that function when you need it

sieiw 5mo ago

Right. So how long do we have to wait? The reality is the actual output doesn’t match the hype at all. Software engineers should be getting laid off all over the place, there should be a decrease in hiring period. This is not what’s happening.

user34283 5mo ago
Let's see at the end of the year how that went with the supposedly disappointing actual output and no layoffs.
- grey-area 5mo ago
  Sure, let’s see. So far there is nothing to justify the hype, and there is a lot of money and hype around this, and a lot of fervent true believers.
  - user34283 5mo ago
    I am working like 20 hours a week on my new iOS app with Codex. People on here talk like it was some belief or suggest I am somehow profiting from "hyping" AI. Is it so hard to believe that agentic coding now works? Engineers are taking it up left and right. Edit with reply: I can't, because the app is still in the works. Also my HN account is again rate limited and I won't be able to post more comments. Edit number two to the other comment: It's not really that expensive. With Anthropic it would be $200, with Codex the $100 subscription is sufficient. It is interesting phrasing when you say that the providers "are making me think" the use of their service would be better, rather than me reaching this conclusion myself after using their services extensively for my work. And honestly, I think I've had it with HN. I can't even participate properly in the discussion, maybe because some moderator thought my comments and opinions unworthy again.
    - throwaway2037 5mo ago
      Can you share a link to your app?
      - philote 5mo ago
        I recently had a coworker open my eyes to why vibe coding, or AI-assisted coding is so popular. He likened it to a slot machine, where pulling the slot's arm is like asking an LLM to code something. You get crap most of the time, but when it works, it's like getting a payout. That dopamine hit keeps them pulling, hoping for another hit, and they then believe it's a better way to develop software.
        sph 5mo ago
        Oh that’s definitely it. Even Steve Yegge mad with vibecoded powers has said it feels a lot like gambling. I wouldn’t trust the judgment of gamblers talking about their ‘winnings’, so to speak.
        user34283 5mo ago
        The difference is that you don't just pull again. You guide the originally mediocre result towards a good outcome by providing feedback and potentially technical insights. That's not a gamble, it works reliably enough.
    - sillysaurusx 5mo ago
      Hey, rate limits are incredibly frustrating, but contributing to HN is worth it. Try writing a polite, brief email to hn@ycombinator.com with a link to your user profile. Tell them that you’ve re-read the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and that you’re willing to follow them. Then ask if it would be possible for the rate limit to be removed. My gut reaction looking over your account is that you mean well but get a little heated. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48147587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48147587 responds to no one in particular and calls HN drivel. Don’t do that. Thoughts like that are normal, but expressing them is difficult to do in a substantive way. It’s often better to not say anything if you feel yourself getting upset. (There are plenty of exceptions to this, but you have to do it in a way where you’re writing for the audience here, not for yourself.) I think if you really put your mind to it, you can write substantively and stay off the rate limit list. Good luck.
  - seszett 5mo ago
    > People on here talk like it was some belief or suggest I am somehow profiting from "hyping" AI. Not really, the "people on here" rather consider that Anthropic and co. are profiting from you by making you think it's better to give them money to develop your app rather than do it yourself or hire a developer. The hype is there to steer you towards AI. 20 hours a week must be quite expensive in tokens.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- lomase 5mo ago
  [dead]
- hypeatei 5mo ago
  Companies are forward looking, they wouldn't wait until the end of the year if LLMs were truly as disruptive as AI believers are saying.
Traubenfuchs 5mo ago
...and ultra high velocity single human person agent swarm vibe coded replacements for existing software and SaaS should come out en masse. Where are they?
- sieiw 5mo ago
  In b4 agents have been shit up until a month ago. There hasn’t been much time yet!!
  - user34283 5mo ago
    This is pretty much true. Before Codex with GPT 5.4 and 5.5 I was working on a single feature only, no parallel conversations, and a ton of permission prompts would make it impossible for the agent to even work for five minutes on its own. Times have changed.
    - sieiw 5mo ago
      People like you write a whole lot. Talk about the numbers. Cost reduction and revenue generation. Anything else irrelevant - nobody cares. The world is about making money and moving things forward.
      - user34283 5mo ago
        I hope to publish my app in a month or two, after sufficient polish, market research, and App Store optimization. As I said, it's not exactly realistic to ask for numbers and a Photoshop competitor within two months.
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
- user34283 5mo ago
  I understand Codex had 500k weekly users at the beginning of the year, now they have 4M. GPT 5.4 came out at the start of March, GPT 5.5 end of April. What do you expect, that we all go to market with a Photoshop competitor within two months? Edit: and I can't provide any more replies since once again some automatic system or a mod rate limited my account for whatever reason.
theshrike79 5mo ago
I've personally recreated two applications with 100% vibe engineering, now I'm saving about 100€/year - forever. Dunno if the companies whose product subscriptions I've cancelled will fire people because of it though. Maybe eventually?

sph 5mo ago

Funny how that works both ways. "I am 100x productive with AI, I can ship in days what took months before" and "oh no, you don't understand, it's not really possible to vibecode Photoshop" found elsewhere in this thread. If I were magically 100x productive, the first thing I would do would be to recreate Photoshop.

bensyverson 5mo ago
Can I ask why? Specifically, why Photoshop and not Canva, or Figma, or Lightroom? I ask because Photoshop probably wouldn’t have a market if it was introduced in 2026. What would you be hoping to accomplish by recreating Photoshop?
- techpression 5mo ago
  Do you use Photoshop? The underlying engine which gives support for layers and smart objects is in itself such an amazing piece of tech that nobody seems to get even close to (and I’ve tried them all). The brush engine is fantastic, liquify and the general support for plugins, and heck, just the basic math behind the filters. Canva and Figma are layout tools, not for pixel editing. Recreating it would make it faster and cheaper, something that has been driving software for decades.
  - bensyverson 5mo ago
    I'm not being argumentative; I was genuinely trying to understand why you would aim to recreate Photoshop in particular, because Photoshop includes such a huge range of functionality. If it's about recreating the brush engine, that's pretty achievable. I would be curious to learn why Krita is not enough though. Context: I've developed multiple Photoshop file format parsers/writers and know Photoshop at a very deep level. And would never want to replicate the specific set of tradeoffs Adobe made in the 1980s.
    - techpression 5mo ago
      That’s fair, it’s just that a lot of the functionality overlaps in very rewarding ways, even if you only use the overlap 5% it’s incredibly frustrating to not have that function when you need it