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news.ycombinator.com

Ask HN: Where has creativity in software gone?

14points bypiratesAndSons4h
I sometimes read Show HN, and there is literally no creativity at all: note-taker app after note-taker clone. Everyone is essentially looking at what’s already there, and they say, “Why can’t I create the exact same product, but worse, and add an AI suffix?”

There is nothing creative about AI. Show HN might as well be renamed “Prompt HN.” These promoters always say, “Prompting makes me efficient; I don’t have to write code by hand anymore.”

Great. What has your “efficiency” gotten you? Yet another note-taker with an “AI” suffix? I could take notes in 1990.

Where did the actual engineers go? Surely they aren’t all selling ads at Facebook’s spyware empire? Where are the transistor, the C programming language, Emacs, and SQLite developers of our time?

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Comments

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Ranked by HN
num422hon HN
For no particular reason, I've been browsing HN posts from before November 30, 2022. There's a treasure trove of content from that era. Maybe I've just been hit by a wave of nostalgia.
armchairhacker3hon HN
Looking at https://news.ycombinator.com/show right now, it's not too bad. The #1 (Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard) is definitely creative. The next 3 (budgeting, AI monitor, scraper) are boring, the next (How Random Are You?) is so-so...and the pattern continues like this.

The pessimist says creative projects are rare nowadays, an optimist says they're still coming out. You may also dislike the vibe-coded "...Craft" projects, but seemingly building a production-capable software in days is something that has never been done before and IMO inspiring.

al_borland2hon HN
Not to be a Debby Downer, but GarageBand on iOS had a guitar like that ages ago. It is cool to see something like it in the browser, but here is a 15 year old video showing it on the iPad. While it may not be a common project, it certainly isn’t new.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=E_KYUF6pxR8

Edit…

I looked at that site some more and found the songs area. That’s pretty cool.

Avicebron4hon HN
I've worked in C, used Emacs for almost two decades now, and work(ed) on plenty of SQL. We're tired, older. You either were part of the cohort who rode the wave of 150K starting salaries out of college or a bootcamp 15-20 years ago or not. And if you were, you now have graduated to making upwards of that and displacing locals out of their small rural communities because the economy is bad there and you can. Or you weren't part of that cohort and your work and hobby, which was never making tons of money, is now less likely than ever to make money and you're being displaced the former group pretending like programming is gauche.
piratesAndSons3hon HN
C is the most perfect language, so simple yet so powerful. That’s why I like C and Arch Linux, made by and for programmers, with no stupidity tolerated. I wish I could use Arch on mobile. That would be epic.
d3Xt3r21mon HN
Someone got Arch working (natively, no Android) on their Pixel 9 recently. Was posted to r/Linux, you should check it out.
bigyabai3hon HN
> I wish I could use Arch on mobile.

You totally can. I've got a Termux with NixOS installed on my Android handset. There's also Phosh if you want a fully Arch-native install on your phone.

Wouldn't be my choice for a mobile OS, but I don't see any roadblocks to using it.

thomasjeff11hon HN
One reason is that AI seems to be pushing everyone to be "fast" than "better".
KenPainter3hon HN
I thought mine was very creative, but it never got off new show hn.

Sorry no C, Emacs. Just some database stuff.

akerl_4hon HN
You say this like there's nobody out there working on transistors or C or Emacs or Sqlite. There definitely are.
piratesAndSons4hon HN
Look at Show HN. Literally an infant could prompt and post every single thread. It’s so simple, so stupidly repetitive, and these are so-called “products.” I wonder what the man who built SQLite for the US Navy would think when he sees someone calling themselves a software engineer while prompting a machine to build a note taker app for dogs. I would be ashamed to be seen as their equal.