I saw someone use the term "orchestration", which seems to be the word for building the software using LLM tools.
It made me think of the conductor, seemingly the most skillless job in the orchestra. All you do is wave the batton, no need to ever play a instrument. If LLMs are doing the hard part (writing code) then we can be the conductor waving the batton.
But of course the visuals are misleading. Being conductor doesn't take the least skill, it takes the most. He hears every instrument individually, he knows the piece intimately, and through his conducting brings a unique expression to a familiar work.
LLMs have made the musician part automated. They'll play whatever you want. No doubt a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled conductor. And a incredible tool for someone who can't play to generate music for themselves.
There's no shortage of "I built it and they won't come" posts here on HN, predating LLMs by decades. Because code has never been the hard part of "software as a business ". LLMs have driven this point home. Code has never been cheaper. Business has never been harder.
Can't read this every paragraph ends with it's not x it's y. Just give me the prompt so I can read the real insights you have and not the generated fluff.
I randomly skipped to five different paragraphs and each one ended with a "!x but y" logical statement, just formatted differently most of the time. Crazy how you can't unsee it.
A sibling [dead] comment to mine is a rebuttal to "just post the prompt", where it itself was expanded to several paragraphs that each say nearly nothing, including this gem:
> "That’s not a critique of the writing. It’s a diagnosis"
I miss when people just typed their thoughts concisely and hit send without passing it to an inflater. I'd maybe have a chance of understanding the sibling comment's point.
The "barrier to entry for building software" has not collapsed, as it was never about "where engineering shifts from writing code to shaping systems". It has always been about understanding the problem to solve and doing so in a provably correct manner.
Another way to reify this is:
When making software, remember that it is a snapshot of
your understanding of the problem. It states to all,
including your future-self, your approach, clarity, and
appropriateness of the solution for the problem at hand.
Choose your statements wisely.
With LLM usage, there's another necessary step, you need to distill that understanding into text. I see people put significant time into LLM workflows. But LLM coding quality will be solved by the AI companies in due time. What's less likely to be solved, on comparable timeframes, is the creation of the input text artefact, containing your world model, from which good programs emerge when future LLMs ingest it. That is what takes up my time, building the textual wellspring for my project. The code is relatively ephemeral.
In other words, yes we have CNC machines and electric saws and whatnot, reliable to a certain degree (you can still injure yourself badly), but it doesn't remove the need of a carpenter, because a carpenter also knows how to make a hammer from scratch even if he doesn't make one in his entire life.
When you pay for anything you basically exchange money so that someone else take care of a problem you have. Obviously if you are paying you expect the result to be of good quality. Software is no different, AI won't change that fact and engineering is about creating robust solution at the cheapest price. Just my 2 cents.
solving problem should be an obsession rather than building. AI have fueled way too many builders while edge cases and lifecycle maintainence of the code is more of an afterthought
For the love of all that is holy, I cannot read another 5 page AI post that could've been like 200 words. Just make it a paragraph or two and write using your brain, people. Does everything have to be ran through an AI? I'm sure there's some decent ideas in here, but I'm not wasting my time reading this slop.
> People are increasingly building tools to solve a single, specific problem exactly once—and then discarding them. It is software as a disposable utility, designed for the immediate "now" rather than the distant "later."
Yes! This is 100% it.
This is a net good for everyone because it brings basic programming literacy to the masses and culls a lot of junk projects that are littering github or SaaS scams.
It means people can focus on the problems that actually matter.
AI doesn't have any impact on the need for accountable humans to write code.
The scratchpad analogy is so good. Most mature business software is almost literally like a tome of legal documents that have to be edited carefully, but that doesn't have anything to do with the napkin in your pocket.
In a way it's good but as far as energy usage goes, it sucks.
Not only is it taking way more energy to write software now with LLMS than by "hand", now everyone is repeating work many times over to write the same tools.
From a freedom standpoint one could argue is gives the user the most freedom to have what they want and need. But its very bad from an energy efficiency point of view.
Google, Apple, Meta, X, Bluesky, Shopify, Stripe and all the big software companies must be really shaking in their boots for disruption against the army of vibe coders. /s
What a random set of companies to choose. You'd probably need to think critically about each one of those when assessing the accuracy of your statements.
Why would any big software company need to care? There are so many small businesses with unique problems with no current off-the-shelf software solutions because they've always been too niche to justify the time and expense of bespoke development. Now that door is open. Big software companies can keep servicing big businesses and mass markets, while opportunities abound for anyone else willing to innovate on smaller problems. Not everything needs to be built to scale.
I saw someone use the term "orchestration", which seems to be the word for building the software using LLM tools.
It made me think of the conductor, seemingly the most skillless job in the orchestra. All you do is wave the batton, no need to ever play a instrument. If LLMs are doing the hard part (writing code) then we can be the conductor waving the batton.
But of course the visuals are misleading. Being conductor doesn't take the least skill, it takes the most. He hears every instrument individually, he knows the piece intimately, and through his conducting brings a unique expression to a familiar work.
LLMs have made the musician part automated. They'll play whatever you want. No doubt a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled conductor. And a incredible tool for someone who can't play to generate music for themselves.
There's no shortage of "I built it and they won't come" posts here on HN, predating LLMs by decades. Because code has never been the hard part of "software as a business ". LLMs have driven this point home. Code has never been cheaper. Business has never been harder.
Vibecoding is the feeling of coding. It's the same feeling people have when they say they can see the picture in their head, but can't quite draw it.
Can't read this every paragraph ends with it's not x it's y. Just give me the prompt so I can read the real insights you have and not the generated fluff.
I randomly skipped to five different paragraphs and each one ended with a "!x but y" logical statement, just formatted differently most of the time. Crazy how you can't unsee it.
A sibling [dead] comment to mine is a rebuttal to "just post the prompt", where it itself was expanded to several paragraphs that each say nearly nothing, including this gem:
> "That’s not a critique of the writing. It’s a diagnosis"
I miss when people just typed their thoughts concisely and hit send without passing it to an inflater. I'd maybe have a chance of understanding the sibling comment's point.
Now it is a tell but eventually people may natutally start speaking like this!!
This isn't mind control, just language evolution quiety nudged by AI. ;)
Yeah it's becoming increasingly obvious now. The moment I see this "contrast framing" I stop reading.
I read this as 'contrast farming' and like the term better.
That's not just contrast framing. It's contrast farming.
Thanks for saving me from reading it myself.
we just need to send the article back to the LLM to get it synthesized /s
The "barrier to entry for building software" has not collapsed, as it was never about "where engineering shifts from writing code to shaping systems". It has always been about understanding the problem to solve and doing so in a provably correct manner.
Another way to reify this is:
With LLM usage, there's another necessary step, you need to distill that understanding into text. I see people put significant time into LLM workflows. But LLM coding quality will be solved by the AI companies in due time. What's less likely to be solved, on comparable timeframes, is the creation of the input text artefact, containing your world model, from which good programs emerge when future LLMs ingest it. That is what takes up my time, building the textual wellspring for my project. The code is relatively ephemeral.
If your job is to write code, you are being replaced. If your job is to use technology to solve problems, your job just got a lot more interesting.
In other words, yes we have CNC machines and electric saws and whatnot, reliable to a certain degree (you can still injure yourself badly), but it doesn't remove the need of a carpenter, because a carpenter also knows how to make a hammer from scratch even if he doesn't make one in his entire life.
So many nice blogs showing on HN, and no RSS feed. Seems like most are on github pages, that should be a feature over there.
Man. This post reminded me I wanted a Firefox extension for switching between tabs using Q and E. I got it done in like 15 min and moved on.
When you pay for anything you basically exchange money so that someone else take care of a problem you have. Obviously if you are paying you expect the result to be of good quality. Software is no different, AI won't change that fact and engineering is about creating robust solution at the cheapest price. Just my 2 cents.
solving problem should be an obsession rather than building. AI have fueled way too many builders while edge cases and lifecycle maintainence of the code is more of an afterthought
For the love of all that is holy, I cannot read another 5 page AI post that could've been like 200 words. Just make it a paragraph or two and write using your brain, people. Does everything have to be ran through an AI? I'm sure there's some decent ideas in here, but I'm not wasting my time reading this slop.
you won't get clicks and you can't build brand with it. sad but true.
> People are increasingly building tools to solve a single, specific problem exactly once—and then discarding them. It is software as a disposable utility, designed for the immediate "now" rather than the distant "later."
Yes! This is 100% it.
This is a net good for everyone because it brings basic programming literacy to the masses and culls a lot of junk projects that are littering github or SaaS scams.
It means people can focus on the problems that actually matter.
AI doesn't have any impact on the need for accountable humans to write code.
The scratchpad analogy is so good. Most mature business software is almost literally like a tome of legal documents that have to be edited carefully, but that doesn't have anything to do with the napkin in your pocket.
In a way it's good but as far as energy usage goes, it sucks.
Not only is it taking way more energy to write software now with LLMS than by "hand", now everyone is repeating work many times over to write the same tools.
From a freedom standpoint one could argue is gives the user the most freedom to have what they want and need. But its very bad from an energy efficiency point of view.
This post is AI generated slop.
What makes you think it is?
I thought it seemed like an especially good read!
You're absolutely right!
> The barrier to entry has effectively collapsed.
Google, Apple, Meta, X, Bluesky, Shopify, Stripe and all the big software companies must be really shaking in their boots for disruption against the army of vibe coders. /s
(They are actually laughing at all of them)
What a random set of companies to choose. You'd probably need to think critically about each one of those when assessing the accuracy of your statements.
Why would any big software company need to care? There are so many small businesses with unique problems with no current off-the-shelf software solutions because they've always been too niche to justify the time and expense of bespoke development. Now that door is open. Big software companies can keep servicing big businesses and mass markets, while opportunities abound for anyone else willing to innovate on smaller problems. Not everything needs to be built to scale.