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This is the lowest quality discussion I've seen on HN in ages.

Quarrelsome 5mo ago
AI always does this in the public sphere and software is particularly susceptible because there's no key metric to measure productivity and people obviously have vested emotional interests in the technology failing. On the other side people are always keen to show off their alignment with the new hotness, be that OOP, Agile, Functional, Ruby, web tech, js frameworks, Rust or agentic work today. Somewhere in the middle is the truth but I have no idea how it looks, given all the noise. So everyone cherry picks the answers they want to justify their position and screams into the void, with each camp rallying around their talking points and often failing to engage with the other in good faith. The only small mercy is that its not as bad as the conversation around the use of AI in art.
- ofjcihen 5mo ago
  It also doesn’t help that the middle of the road, realistic reaction to it is “it’s aight” and that’s just not a discussion worthy response.
  - Quarrelsome 5mo ago
    and that stating such an opinion will still garner you hostility in the public sphere: "what do you mean; you don't hate it?!?!? it uses so much water...."
laichzeit0 5mo ago
I use the disparaging nature of the comments on HN as an indicator of AI progress. It’s negatively correlated. By that metric, AI has improved significantly this year alone.
- elvis10ten 5mo ago
  From my experience using HN, this feels made up. HN sentiment on AI seems to have only gotten better: with more overly pro-AI or nuanced voices plus more AI topics.
- bob1029 5mo ago
  I like to take advantage of this effect. I will post various concepts in threads like these to see how "offensive" the hive mind finds them to be. The more immediate & adverse the reaction, the more certain I become that the idea is probably worth pursuing. Topics like SQLite vs hosted sql used to be the same way around here. In 2017 you'd get buried under the prison for suggesting that SQLite is competitive with MySQL. Today, the inverse is mostly true.

AI always does this in the public sphere and software is particularly susceptible because there's no key metric to measure productivity and people obviously have vested emotional interests in the technology failing. On the other side people are always keen to show off their alignment with the new hotness, be that OOP, Agile, Functional, Ruby, web tech, js frameworks, Rust or agentic work today. Somewhere in the middle is the truth but I have no idea how it looks, given all the noise. So everyone cherry picks the answers they want to justify their position and screams into the void, with each camp rallying around their talking points and often failing to engage with the other in good faith. The only small mercy is that its not as bad as the conversation around the use of AI in art.

ofjcihen 5mo ago
It also doesn’t help that the middle of the road, realistic reaction to it is “it’s aight” and that’s just not a discussion worthy response.
- Quarrelsome 5mo ago
  and that stating such an opinion will still garner you hostility in the public sphere: "what do you mean; you don't hate it?!?!? it uses so much water...."

laichzeit0 5mo ago

I use the disparaging nature of the comments on HN as an indicator of AI progress. It’s negatively correlated. By that metric, AI has improved significantly this year alone.

elvis10ten 5mo ago
From my experience using HN, this feels made up. HN sentiment on AI seems to have only gotten better: with more overly pro-AI or nuanced voices plus more AI topics.
bob1029 5mo ago
I like to take advantage of this effect. I will post various concepts in threads like these to see how "offensive" the hive mind finds them to be. The more immediate & adverse the reaction, the more certain I become that the idea is probably worth pursuing. Topics like SQLite vs hosted sql used to be the same way around here. In 2017 you'd get buried under the prison for suggesting that SQLite is competitive with MySQL. Today, the inverse is mostly true.