5 ms·

Software Bonkers

34 points by razin 2mo ago

xqb64 2mo ago
Lost me at "Claude Code".
xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago
Bit late to the party mate. Everyone cycled into llm psychosis in December and had cycled out by February or so
- wffurr 2mo ago
  "cycled out" what. The tech world is still completely insane.
  - groby_b 2mo ago
    Yes, but we've traded LLM psychosis for agent psychosis, followed by loop psychosis. (Or was it the other way round? Also, we did dark software factories already, right?) Turns out that if you try to be "15 minutes into everyone else's future", you get better and more frequent trips than any psychedelics could provide.
    - 0gs 2mo ago
      you know what's next. CONSCIOUSNESS PSYCHOSIS and it's gonna be a wild one
    - ge96 2mo ago
      > LLM psychosis for agent psychosis, followed by loop psychosis Sounds like the start of a good iceberg meme Although I'm not sure what loop psychosis is damn I'm behind
- natbennett 2mo ago
  This was posted in March 2026.
  - tonyedgecombe 2mo ago
    It’s all invalid then because the new models are soooo much better.
  - xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago
    Oh true. The submission should've been dated then. Shame on OP.
seblon 2mo ago
Maybe not the most interesting article on HN, but I need to agree. Accounting in general is way too completex. For a Non business case (no tax involved), I decided to use hledger, but my "UI" to it is just an LLM. It was nerver so simple to make "okay enough" book keeping.
natbennett 2mo ago
The phenomenon this describes is the most important effect of LLM coding tools, and this is my favorite description of it.
danshipt 2mo ago
As impressive as it sounds, I don’t think this is representative of the AI panorama. It’s difficult for non tech people to build tailored software just like that, and unless things change drastically, I don’t see the majority of the population building their own software just like they use mobile phones
- 0gs 2mo ago
  yeah, i disagree. i think i am essentially ~non-technical and it is not difficult to build one-user applications at all. it's not even difficult to build "real" software!
  - klibertp 2mo ago
    Yesterday, Codex helped me resurrect a project[1] from 2013, where the code was published, but trapped inside an exotic format that can only be read by a single application. That application had ~14 breaking releases (rewrite everything!) over the past 13 years. Needless to say, no current version of the app can read the 2013 file, and no current system can run version 2.0 (it's now at version 14) of the app in 2026. Codex helped me create a containerized environment that pulled dependencies from that era, connected the container to my host GUI session, and successfully exported the code to normal-ish text files. It took half an hour (of Codex time, not mine) to check changelogs and try different version combinations. I was quite happy with the results. Today, I wanted to capture screenshots every 5 seconds on a Windows machine. Codex created a dotNet project that compiled to a (self-contained!) bundle. It worked, of course, and I even ended up using it. The problem was that the bundle was 167 MB in size, held together by lots of XML config, and implemented the "RBGA-bitmap to PNG file" dumping from scratch; the whole thing was close to 1.5k lines of code. 30 LOC of PowerShell would be a perfectly acceptable solution here. I was... well, not impressed, and I would never show this solution to anyone, but it at least works and I didn't need to brush off my PS skills as a result, which is kind of good enough in this specific case. As a programmer, I can immediately recognize when the LLM output is something nobody should ever see. It doesn't matter if nobody's going to see it anyway, I agree - yes, "one-user applications" fall in that category. However, when you mention <<"real" software>>, that changes the perspective. How would you know whether your software is "real"(-ish) or not? "Hey Claude, are we production ready enough right now?" That won't work. TL;DR: requirements for code quality are hard to estimate, and code quality is something many professional programmers struggle to consistently recognize (not to mention achieve). Until the models get good enough to make good code a baseline, "real" software will remain hard to write, and better left to people who can recognize bad code quickly. That doesn't mean only professional programmers: plenty of hobbyist coders are "non-technical" in general. But at least for now, you still need to be a coder yourself to get consistently good results from the AI. [1] https://pleiad.cl/research/software/gradualtalk https://pleiad.cl/research/software/gradualtalk
0gs 2mo ago
ARE we still in the dorks-only phase? i am certainly a gigantic loser, but i am not sure i am the sort of dork being invoked and i have been doing and thinking about the exact same kinda stuff. i think the genie is out of the bottle or whatever
andrekandre 2mo ago
reading articles like this, i really wish people would before headlines before a group of paragraphs so i can scan the progression/points and see if its worth reading... a wall of paragraphs and a title like "software bonkers" doesn't help just my 2c
nylonstrung 2mo ago
I think the overarching trend is "Buy v. Build" has reversed as hard as Roe v. Wade If we haven't already crossed this point, the time that goes into software procurement, implementation, hand-off with the vendor, talking to support, getting customization will be less than just making something turnkey that solves exactly your problems But we're definitely at the point already where building something quickly with AI is a already much more fun and rewarding use of time for any semi-technical person
calldacopsidgaf 2mo ago
okay

Software Bonkers

34 points by razin 2mo ago

xqb64 2mo ago

Lost me at "Claude Code".

xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago

Bit late to the party mate. Everyone cycled into llm psychosis in December and had cycled out by February or so

wffurr 2mo ago
"cycled out" what. The tech world is still completely insane.
- groby_b 2mo ago
  Yes, but we've traded LLM psychosis for agent psychosis, followed by loop psychosis. (Or was it the other way round? Also, we did dark software factories already, right?) Turns out that if you try to be "15 minutes into everyone else's future", you get better and more frequent trips than any psychedelics could provide.
  - 0gs 2mo ago
    you know what's next. CONSCIOUSNESS PSYCHOSIS and it's gonna be a wild one
  - ge96 2mo ago
    > LLM psychosis for agent psychosis, followed by loop psychosis Sounds like the start of a good iceberg meme Although I'm not sure what loop psychosis is damn I'm behind
natbennett 2mo ago
This was posted in March 2026.
- tonyedgecombe 2mo ago
  It’s all invalid then because the new models are soooo much better.
- xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago
  Oh true. The submission should've been dated then. Shame on OP.

seblon 2mo ago

Maybe not the most interesting article on HN, but I need to agree. Accounting in general is way too completex. For a Non business case (no tax involved), I decided to use hledger, but my "UI" to it is just an LLM. It was nerver so simple to make "okay enough" book keeping.

natbennett 2mo ago

The phenomenon this describes is the most important effect of LLM coding tools, and this is my favorite description of it.

danshipt 2mo ago

As impressive as it sounds, I don’t think this is representative of the AI panorama. It’s difficult for non tech people to build tailored software just like that, and unless things change drastically, I don’t see the majority of the population building their own software just like they use mobile phones

0gs 2mo ago
yeah, i disagree. i think i am essentially ~non-technical and it is not difficult to build one-user applications at all. it's not even difficult to build "real" software!
- klibertp 2mo ago
  Yesterday, Codex helped me resurrect a project[1] from 2013, where the code was published, but trapped inside an exotic format that can only be read by a single application. That application had ~14 breaking releases (rewrite everything!) over the past 13 years. Needless to say, no current version of the app can read the 2013 file, and no current system can run version 2.0 (it's now at version 14) of the app in 2026. Codex helped me create a containerized environment that pulled dependencies from that era, connected the container to my host GUI session, and successfully exported the code to normal-ish text files. It took half an hour (of Codex time, not mine) to check changelogs and try different version combinations. I was quite happy with the results. Today, I wanted to capture screenshots every 5 seconds on a Windows machine. Codex created a dotNet project that compiled to a (self-contained!) bundle. It worked, of course, and I even ended up using it. The problem was that the bundle was 167 MB in size, held together by lots of XML config, and implemented the "RBGA-bitmap to PNG file" dumping from scratch; the whole thing was close to 1.5k lines of code. 30 LOC of PowerShell would be a perfectly acceptable solution here. I was... well, not impressed, and I would never show this solution to anyone, but it at least works and I didn't need to brush off my PS skills as a result, which is kind of good enough in this specific case. As a programmer, I can immediately recognize when the LLM output is something nobody should ever see. It doesn't matter if nobody's going to see it anyway, I agree - yes, "one-user applications" fall in that category. However, when you mention <<"real" software>>, that changes the perspective. How would you know whether your software is "real"(-ish) or not? "Hey Claude, are we production ready enough right now?" That won't work. TL;DR: requirements for code quality are hard to estimate, and code quality is something many professional programmers struggle to consistently recognize (not to mention achieve). Until the models get good enough to make good code a baseline, "real" software will remain hard to write, and better left to people who can recognize bad code quickly. That doesn't mean only professional programmers: plenty of hobbyist coders are "non-technical" in general. But at least for now, you still need to be a coder yourself to get consistently good results from the AI. [1] https://pleiad.cl/research/software/gradualtalk https://pleiad.cl/research/software/gradualtalk

0gs 2mo ago

ARE we still in the dorks-only phase? i am certainly a gigantic loser, but i am not sure i am the sort of dork being invoked and i have been doing and thinking about the exact same kinda stuff. i think the genie is out of the bottle or whatever

andrekandre 2mo ago

reading articles like this, i really wish people would before headlines before a group of paragraphs so i can scan the progression/points and see if its worth reading... a wall of paragraphs and a title like "software bonkers" doesn't help just my 2c

nylonstrung 2mo ago

I think the overarching trend is "Buy v. Build" has reversed as hard as Roe v. Wade If we haven't already crossed this point, the time that goes into software procurement, implementation, hand-off with the vendor, talking to support, getting customization will be less than just making something turnkey that solves exactly your problems But we're definitely at the point already where building something quickly with AI is a already much more fun and rewarding use of time for any semi-technical person

calldacopsidgaf 2mo ago

okay