I'll take it one step further - we have a 2-year-old toddler and recently I realized that I was spending a full, solid, real 1-1.5 hours per day doing the same kitchen & play area clean-up. Every day. No matter how hard I tried, the daily chaos of my wife & I working from home, preparing meals, and our family spending time in this part of the house meant it just needed this work.
I hired a lovely person recently who comes to the house for exactly that hour a day every day and now does this task for us. It's the most "luxury" labor service I've ever hired, and it, easily and without question, the best use of $$ I have ever spent on a service. I have an extra hour to hang with the family now and our kitchen & play area are now fully reset and spotless every night when we go to bed and every morning when we wake up.
It's not streaming service cheap, and I'm thankful that my business can generate enough $ to allow me to pay for this service, but man is it freeing and wonderful.
The real cause is that you and your wife never learned how to keep house. I'm in the same boat. My house is cluttered. Not like hoarder bad but stuff just piles up. I've been a guest where the house is always neat and everything is put away. The hosts just never let anything get out of place. Everything they own has a place and it always goes back there immediately after its used. They maintain this organized well kept home almost effortlessly, because they were taught how to do it at a young age by parents who were the same way. Whereas for me, it would take me several dedicated hours a day to get everything picked up and put away.
Yes and no. They somehow tidy the house as they are moving through it anwyay. So it doesn't amount to substituting that time for something else they would be doing. Or at least that's how it appears to me.
I can see the charm in hiring a cleaning person you trust, but I personally wouldn't extend that to paying a faceless corporation to send a robot to do it.
I'd much rather pay a nice human significantly more money than have it done by a stinking robot.
I’ve read so many stories like this that I’ve actually gotten scared of making PRs open source projects.
There’s one in particular where a feature I really wanted didn’t exist, so I forked and had Codex 5.5 assist with building the feature on my local version. It works perfectly. My life has been improved in being able to have this feature now.
Normally I’d want to share it back with the community so others can benefit as well (presumably if I wanted this feature, others probably want it too.) But…I am not pretending this is perfect, great, or even good code. I spent about an hour total on it - it works, I haven’t had any issues with it, but it’s probably slop by any hard-core engineering account. And I neither want to get attacked for submitting slop nor do I have the time to properly engineer it to be hand-coded, so the net result is that it lives on my machine alone.
Is this the right outcome? I feel guilty that I’m getting a better version of this software and others aren’t. I want to help makes others lives easier too, but I don’t want to burden the project maintainers or get yelled at for submitting slop.
First, you don't have to feel guilty of anything, since forking open source projects to make changes tailored to your use case is as old as open source itself. It is, in fact, the primary benefit of open source.
Second, it is not a given that your change would be accepted regardless of who wrote it. Maybe the feature is too niche for its complexity, maybe it is better implemented with more generality or extensibility that does not make sense for your own use. In those cases, your change might have been rejected upstream, so having it only locally is a perfect fine solution.
Third, if you believe it is actually useful for broader users, open an issue requesting that feature, and say LLM implemented it in an hour. Then the maintainers can prompt their own LLM to implement it with ease, or do whatever they want with their project.
I did this recently too, didn't really care about the code quality of a small tool, just asked Claude to add in the features I wanted and it produced something that worked.
I just pushed the changes to my fork of the project and left it at that. Leaves the feature around for me and anyone that stumbles across my fork, without wasting the original dev's time looking at code I didn't care to look at.
Even before AI coding I think it was relatively common to fork some code and edit it to have something you want, then to either leave it as a personal version, or to never actually get a response on the PR.
As a maintainer, discovering that a PR is AI-generated just absolutely saps any motivation I have to actually review it. I've never been a great reviewer, and AI means I have to watch out for really different kinds of errors. There's also the potential for extra friction with interactions with the "author": some people try to pull a "I'm just a smol bean, not a programmer, how dare you ask me to do anything" in response to changes, while others just play a middleman role in between you and the AI they're using.
If you're actually motivated to get a working fix upstream, and you're willing to do more than be a passive player, then it's not necessarily a problem to submit it (subject to responsible disclosure, of course)... but you also say that you don't have the time to properly engineer it, which makes me think you don't have the time to be sufficiently engaged in the upstreaming process anyways.
AI has inverted the effort - in the past a PR meant someone had to come in, read your ticket, documentation, code and tests to successfully author a PR. Subsequently reviewing that PR would typically take less time than authoring it and you would receive fewer PRs.
Now it is it the opposite, maintainers are flooded with low effort PRs that take more effort to review than author, but the author is unable to see why this is problematic to the maintainer and the project.
Exvuse me, I've been doing drive by manual slop PRs for at least a decade.
I certainly didn't read a ticket; I ran into the problem myself. I probably didn't read documentation or write tests either. I just fixed my problem and tried to help others a bit.
I'm glad it works for you, but please do not submit low-effort stuff like this, if you're not willing to do the rest of the work to make it maintainable.
I get the desire to help -- that's fine -- but AI code is abundant and of low value. Don't sandbag them with more work and increase their maintenance burden, with stuff they could easily vibe code themselves.
Just go for it. Do it enough, and over time you'll either find yourself resilient enough, or conclude that people do not actually deserve it (or rather that you do not deserve the struggle), and you'll be cured of this compulsion. The only way to go is forward.
It isn't clear that AI generated code is copyrightable, so that portion of the code wouldn't able to have the license enforced against violators, and so the authors wouldn't accept such code. Of course if its permissively licensed, the authors probably don't care to enforce the license, so might be fine including the code.
To submit the code, at minimum, you should review and fix the code diff, run the appropriate static analysis tools against it, write the pull request description and commit messages yourself, read the contribution guidelines, make sure everything matches that, disclose that you used AI and for what, and the prompts used.
It’s a reasonable when you frame it like this: the consequences of one AI-assisted addition are small… but maintainers are responsible for the codebase’s long-term quality after years of additions. The bar's higher. (Similarly, my friends like it when I host an occasional dinner party, but things would really suck at a restaurant run by nothing but my clones.)
Yes, if you can't vouch for the quality of the code that is the correct outcome. The long term health and maintainability of an open source project takes precedence over adding another feature. This was the case before repos were flooded with AI slop as well. Virtually no project would have accepted a random code dump if the person submitting it does not understand it because that just means the burden falls on someone else which would very quickly get any software project into big trouble.
If you don't have time to properly engineer it, then you can't submit. Why would you feel guilty? Others can throw a coin in the laundromat, too, if they are so inclined.
There is nothing wrong with forking, and one man's "better" version is another's bloat. Also, making a fork rather than a PR avoids burdening maintainers.
We're in this weird in-between phase of the tech world where projects like this can now be put together in a few hours/days, but the audience of us HN folk are still trained on the idea that this is the result of months or years of work.
We're going to have to re-train ourselves on what hard work looks like (and thus what should be upvoted here).
I don't know whether the project's creator (@willchen96?) is a lawyer, or if they work at a law firm that helped them shape this, or how much time and effort they put into this, or whether law firms even want or need a vibe-coded open source project for their legal AI stack, but we should be considering the totality of those things when looking at new projects these days.
I'm guessing a lot of similar debates were had in the 1970s when we first started compiling C to Assembly, and I wonder if the outcome will be the same.
(BTW: I was not around then, so if I'm guessing wrong here please correct me!)
Over time compilers have gotten better and we're now at the point where we trust them enough that we don't need to review the Assembly or machine code for cleanliness, optimization, etc. And in fact we've even moved at least one abstraction layer up.
Are there mission-critical inner loops in systems these days that DO need hand-written C or Assembly? Sure. Does that matter for 99% of software projects? Negative.
I'm extrapolating that AI-generated code will follow the same path.
The high level language -> assembly seems like an apt analogy for using LLMs but I would like to argue that it is only a weak one. The reason in that, previously, both the high level language and the assembly language had well defined semantics and the transform was deterministic whereas now you are using English or other human language, with ambiguities and lacking well-defined semantics. The reason math symbolisms were invented in the first place is because human language did not have the required unambiguous precision, and if we encounter hurdles with LLMs, we may need to reinvent this once more.
This debate didn't start with C. Compilers existed pretty much since Algol, and the debate was there too.
There were also similar arguments made about certain other mechanisms that programmers expected to become obsolete over time, but which never did. For example, all the "visual programming" that later transformed into "no code" programming never really delivered on the promise. (We still have a bunch of tools and languages that carry the "visual" adjective in them, but very few people remember why that adjective was there in the first place). Eg. Visual Basic was supposed to be visual because you'd build interfaces by dragging components into the designer view of your IDE and then using graphical editor style interface to position them, label them etc. Not only MSVS came with the "designer" view, Eclipse had one too, probably more than one. Swing had its own "designer" as did a bunch of other UI frameworks.
Programmers also believed that flat files will be gone and be replaced by some sort of a structured database with an advanced query mechanism. Again, never happened, and the idea is mostly abandoned today as the storage moved on in a completely different direction.
Object databases: (not to be confused with object store like S3) the direction that seemed all but assured at the down of objects -- never really happened either. Instead we still struggle with ORM, and it's not sure that ORM will not die off eventually.
I wouldn't be so quick as to profess AI prompt libraries to replace source code. There are many problems with this idea, beside the quality of the output. The control of the AI agents and their longevity (in source code this is ensured by standards). Collaborative programming: how people w/o access to the agent are supposed to work with the prompt library instead of the source code?
I don't think we are anywhere close to the point where we can realistically expect prompt libraries to be a generally accepted replacement for the source code. In some niche cases? -- perhaps, but not more than that.
Their best model to date and they won’t let the general public use it.
This is the first moment where the whole “permanent underclass” meme starts to come into view. I had through previously that we the consumers would be reaping the benefits of these frontier models and now they’ve finally come out and just said it - the haves can access our best, and have-nots will just have use the not-quite-best.
Perhaps I was being willfully ignorant, but the whole tone of the AI race just changed for me (not for the better).
Man... It's hard after seeing this to not be worried about the future of SWE
If AI really is bench marking this well -> just sell it as a complete replacement which you can charge for some insane premium, just has to cost less than the employees...
I was worried before, but this is truly the darkest timeline if this is really what these companies are going for.
Of course it's what they're going for. If they could do it they'd replace all human labor - unfortunately it's looking like SWE might be the easiest of the bunch.
The weirdest thing to me is how many working SWEs are actively supporting them in the mission.
The day I start freaking out about my job is the day when my non-engineer friend turned vibe coder understands how, or why the thing that AI wrote works. Or why something doesn't work exactly the way he envisioned and what does it take to get it there.
If it can replace SWEs, then there's no reason why it can't replace say, a lawyer, or any other job for that matter. If it can't, then SWE is fine. If it can - well, we're all fucked either way.
> If it can replace SWEs, then there's no reason why it can't replace say, a lawyer
SWE is unique in that for part of the job it's possible to set up automated verification for correct output - so you can train a model to be better at it. I don't think that exists in law or even most other work.
What is the automated verification of correct output and who defines that?
But before verification, what IS correct output?
I understand SWE process is unique in that there are some automations that verify some inputs and outputs, but this reasoning falls into the same fallacies that we've had before AI era. First one that comes to mind is that 100% code coverage in tests means that software is perfect.
Right, and that's why it's only part of the job. The benchmarks they're currently doing compose of the AI being handed a detailed spec + tests to make pass which isn't really what developing a feature looks like.
Going from fuzzy under-defined spec to something well defined isn't solved.
Going from well defined spec to verification criteria also isn't.
Once those are in place though, we get https://vinext.io - which from what I understand they largely vibe-coded by using NextJS's test suite.
> First one that comes to mind is that 100% code coverage in tests means that software is perfect
I agree.. but I'm also not sure if software needs to be perfect
Agree. Anthrophic in particular have been quite clear in what they are trying to do. Every blog post about every new model almost dismisses every other use case other than coding - every other use case seems almost a footnote in their communication.
Don't worry – if you're lucky they might decide to redistribute some of their profits to you when you're unemployed =)
Of course this assumes you're in the US, and that further AI advancements either lack the capabilities required to be a threat to humanity, or if they do, the AI stays in the hands of "the good guys" and remains aligned.
This has been a fallacy for as long as businesses have been built, and it will still be a fallacy in the AI era.
Ideas are cheap and don't need to be protected. Your taste, execution, marketing, UX, support, and all the 1000 things that aren't the code still matter. The code will appear more quickly now: You still need to get people to use it or care about it.
I've found almost without fail that you have more to gain in sharing an idea and getting feedback (both positive and negative) before/while you build the thing than you do in protecting the idea with the fear that as soon as someone hears it they'll steal it and do it better than you.
(The exception I think is in highly competitive spaces where ideas have only a short lifetime -- eg High Frequency Trading / Wall Street in general. An idea for a trade can be worth $$ if done before someone else figures it out, and then it makes sense to protect the idea so you can make use of it first. But that's an extremely narrow domain.)
A close friend who was born with way more candor than I has made fighting this scourge his life's mission and I love him for it.
He has no shame about calling people out. He will walk up to a person - rich, poor, old, young - in a bar, restaurant, on an airplane, or wherever and just let them have it. He'll start politely ("Hello sir would you please either turn the volume off or put headphones on") and if they don't, he will escalate until either there's a shouting match or they relent.
His record is nearly flawless in accomplishing the mission.
He probably chooses the 'right' subjects for aiming his reprimands at. Now let him go to, say, a train with a number of passengers among whom is an individual who decides to use his phone the same way as a dog uses his dick: to clearly mark what he considers to be his territory. Loud gangsta/Turkish/middle-eastern music blaring from the thing, feet on the seat opposite him, the guy sprawling over three seats just waiting for one of the natives to dare to tell him to tone it down a bit. I'm one of those natives who does on occasion and invariably end up in a who-blinks-first contest with the miscreant. Thus far it has only gotten to threats of violence upon which the creature leaves the train at the next station so most of these dogs don't seem to bite. Some do, though, just ask train conductors in the Netherlands or Germany about their experiences with them.
Man, I broadly agree with you about this type of person, but it makes me cringe that you say "this creature" and use the dog metaphor. He sucks but he's a human.
You are, of course, under no obligation to capitulate to my discomfort, but I figured it was worth commenting.
Sure they are human and their actions are part of human behaviour. Having said that I don't hold with language policing so I just use the terms which best describe their behaviour without trying to tie myself into knots about who might be offended by my word choice. If they dislike being talked about in this way they can just cease behaving in ways which make people talk about them in this way. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
I spent a week in hospital last year and one old bloke in our ward watched YouTube on his phone all day every day at full volume. The rest of us offered to buy him some headphones but he was a cantankerous old shit and was having none of it.
The interesting side note to that story though is that I discovered there's an incredibly seedy side to YouTube premium - all he watched was AI generated videos, with an AI generated voice reading out an AI generated script about how some child had lost their parents in a war and then went on to find god, or a "serviceman" had been in a helicopter crash and then gone on to find god. It's basically scamming old people who are fearing the end. I know it's YouTube Premium because literally every 3rd video was a video about "how do I find my purchased videos on YouTube" which he would watch 20 times in a row and then eventually go off and find his purchased scam bait.
Despite how annoying all this was, I came out of it most angry at YouTube and everyone who works there enabling predatory scumbags to target sick old people.
I've been reading a lot of "screw 'em" comments re: the deprecation of 4o and I agree there's some serious cases of AI psychosis going on with the people who are hooked, but damn this is pretty cold - these are humans with real feelings and real emotions here. Someone on X put it well (I'm paraphrasing):
OpenAI gave these people an unregulated experimental psychiatric drug in the form of an AI companion, they got people absolutely hooked (for better or for worse), and now OpenAI is taking it away. That's going to cause some distress.
We should all have some empathy for the (very real) pain this is causing, whether it's due to psychosis or otherwise.
And I agree! It's something I touch upon halfway iirc, but their suffering shouldn't be something to laugh at or mock. It's genuinely upsetting to see to be honest.
At the same time though, I don't think it's healthy to let them go on with 4o either (especially since new users can start chatting with it)
I kind of agree with GP more than the author here. OpenAI got these people hooked and pulling the plug is potentially more harmful than letting them continue to chat with it until they move on naturally (assuming that they eventually will)
I don't think reinforcement is generally the recommended approach for people with delusional or obsessive pathological parasocial fixations. I think generally the idea is to get those people into talk therapy and to cut off all contact with the object of their fixation.
Begs the question of whether the underlying pathology is attachment trauma or some other delusional fixation! I don't doubt most of the people in this predicament are vulnerable for one reason or another. I made a much more specific claim, about delusional obsessive fixation; I did not claim that their underlying mental health issues could be fixed straightforwardly.
It’s a great question, and I think it’s not exclusive.
Obsessive limerent obsession can be driven by reward circuits, and those _can_ be extinquished by more straight-forward therapy, but if it’s driven by unmet emotional needs, it’s often quickly replaced by some other maladaptive coping mechanism (hopefully slightly less unhealthy).
I pay $200/month, don’t come near the limits (yet), and if they raised the price to $1000/month for the exact same product I’d gladly pay it this afternoon (Don’t quote me on this Anthropic!)
If you’re not able to get US$thousands out of these models right now either your expectations are too high or your usage is too low, but as a small business owner and part/most-time SWE, the pricing is a rounding error on value delivered.
As a business expense to make profit, I can understand being ok with this price point.
But as an individual with no profit motive, no way.
I use these products at work, but not as much personally because of the bill. And even if I decided I wanted to pursue a for profit side project I’d have to validate it’s viability before even considering a 200$ monthly subscription
I'm paying $100 per month even though I don't write code professionally. It is purely personal use. I've used the subscription to have Claude create a bunch of custom apps that I use in my daily life.
This did require some amount of effort on my part, to test and iterate and so on, but much less than if I needed to write all the code myself. And, because these programs are for personal use, I don't need to review all the code, I don't have security concerns and so on.
$100 every month for a service that writes me custom applications... I don't know, maybe I'm being stupid with my money, but at the moment it feels well worth the price.
with the US salaries for SWEs $1000/month is not a rounding error for all but definitely for some. say you make $100/hr and CC saves you say 30hrs / month? not rounding error but no brainer. if you make $200+/hr it starts to become a rounding error. I have multiple max accounts at my disposal and at this point would for sure pay $1000/month for max plan. it comes down to simple math
Or the same number of tokens in less time. Kinda feels like the CPU / modem wars of the 90s all over again - I remember those differences you felt going from a 386 -> 486 or from a 2400 -> 9600 baud modem.
We're in the 2400 baud era for coding agents and I for one look forward to the 56k era around the corner ;)
I hired a lovely person recently who comes to the house for exactly that hour a day every day and now does this task for us. It's the most "luxury" labor service I've ever hired, and it, easily and without question, the best use of $$ I have ever spent on a service. I have an extra hour to hang with the family now and our kitchen & play area are now fully reset and spotless every night when we go to bed and every morning when we wake up.
It's not streaming service cheap, and I'm thankful that my business can generate enough $ to allow me to pay for this service, but man is it freeing and wonderful.