Sure, if it had been today, Clippy would have been evil but that's the point, it wasn't back then. Why are we so accepting of the change?
I learned to accept the fact that HN reached a critical mass point that made it fill up with people who market themselves as "product-oriented engineers", which is a way to say "I only build things when they lead to products".
People commiting to the hacker ethos that consists of, among many other things, resistance to the established tools, embracing knowledge and code sharing, and exploration for its own sake are the minority.
The fact that there are many commenters who will claim that they finally build something they weren't able to build before and it's all thanks to LLM's is evidence that we already sacrificed the pursuit of personal competence, softly reframing it as "LLM competence", without caring about the implications.
Because obviously, every kid that dreamt of becoming a software engineer thought about orchestrating multiple agentic models that talk to each other and was excited about reviewing their output over and over again while editing markdown files.
The hackers are dead. Long live the hackers.
This is a mentality I am working extremely hard to get rid of, and I blame HN for indoctrinating me this way.
That said, these days I don't view this place as filled with "product-oriented engineers", but it's become like any other internet forum where naysayers and criticism always rises to the top. You could solve world hunger and the top comment would be someone going "well, actually..."
It's not HN that killed the hackers, it's the Internet snark that put the final nail in the coffin.
It highly depends on your own perspective and goals, but one of the arguments I agree with is that habitually using it will effectively prevent you building any skill or insight into the code you've produced. That in turn leads to unintended consequences as implementation details become opaque and layers of abstraction build up. It's like hyper-accelerating tech-debt for an immediate result, if it's a simple project with no security requirements there would be little reason to not use the tool.
Incorrect. Nobody is denigrating the goals of the initiative. All criticism I see is directed at the choice of the mascot only.
You know... people can love an initiative and criticize its mascot at the same time. The two are not incompatible.
> Clippy would have been evil but that's the point, it wasn't back then.
I was around when Clippy was introduced. It was universally hated. If anything, Clippy would be a good mascot for intrusive AI tools and services that harvest our data without regard for our privacy, not least because Clippy constantly monitored user actions just so that it could interrupt them.
If we want a mascot for tools that respect our data, it should definitely be something far less evil than Clippy.
The top comment, a thread you participated in, claims "The entire forced clippy movement is incredibly poorly thought out" after criticism of using clippy as a mascot.
OP is acting as if anyone criticizing this thing must clearly be opposed to their entire world view, accusing them of being paid shills. No. Maybe they just (rightfully) don't like Clippy, and don't want a movement they care about to turn into that.
* My criticism is
> Nobody is denigrating the goals of the initiative.
You're flooding this thread with your tangent about Clippy, which is diverting focus from the main issue regardless of your intentions.
> I was around when Clippy was introduced.
FWIW, so were many people on this forum and definitely the people behind this movement.
here is the comment posted before your comment that denigrates whole movement with it
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46090463
> I was around when Clippy was introduced. It was universally hated. If anything, Clippy would be a good mascot for intrusive AI tools and services that harvest our data without regard for our privacy, not least because Clippy constantly monitored user actions just so that it could interrupt them.
It would but funnily enough new MS mascot for that, Mico, perfectly encompasses the AI movement with being amorphous, soulless blob
People complain about getting AI shoved down their throats. Clippy was worse in this regard. At least AI doesn't have a dancing animated character that eats up half your processing power with it's silly animations.
To be fair, I kind of liked it. I must have been a target audience, as a kid learning windows it made the computer feel less threatening, dunno.
I don't think we, as kids, were the core audience for Clippy. I think Microsoft just wanted to make home users feel like their computer was some kind of friend, and not a cold machine.
But I agree, using Clippy as a kid was fun and I loved seeing all the animations.
What a hacker would do when faced with hostility would be to work around it, in a way that is clever and efficient. Maybe replicate the functionality of an online service with open source software and some glue, use a proxy to block annoyances, use scrapping techniques to extract the data you want, etc...
Showing a Clippy avatar is nothing like that. It doesn't solve a problem, it demands that others fix the problem for you, but hackers don't ask, they take the matter in their own hands. And the Clippy character, it is trying to help, hackers don't need help. They may take whatever help they get, but if they don't get it, they can figure it out by themselves. They are not well known for giving help either, they can, but unlike Clippy, they are not going to do your job and expect involvement on your part. The focus is on solving problems using the resources they have at their disposal.
Ironic since the initiative has been launched by Louis Rossman, who I consider a true hacker. He started getting known by posting YouTube video of him ranting and fixing Macbooks. He has an unauthorized repair business, and the way he got these computers working, mostly using standard electronic workshop equipment, gray market parts and a working brain is a very "hacker" thing. However it seems like he went from repairing stuff with some ranting to full time ranting.
it's perhaps telling of another flaw in this community that I find I need some way to clarify this isn't snark or sarcasm.
I think that's the exact opposite of the point. Back in the day, clippy was hated for being annoying and evil. In today's context, however, it looks positively benign.
You seem to think that people should approve of an advertisement if they approve of the product.
You mean a forum run by a VC company and frequented mainly by startup bros? Or at least by people working for the "tech" companies responsible for this whole mess?
Now SV is all about grift. Everyone knows it. A nobody still has a chance, they just need to accept it needs to be a grift of some soft.
Here's my perspective:
1) Coastal liberal inner city males with a tech flair and an interest in Apple, have decided that due to lack of social skills and/or inner circle it would be good to keep themselves busy with creating a business. Actually, business is a Republican term, let's call it a startup, - hold that rainbow flag for me will you -.
2) They start to realize, that startups operate in an environment with rules, their "business plan" eventually bumps into those rules. Those rules are what made their piece of land - commonly called a country - a nice place to live.
3) Meanwhile, various interests parade on "news" outlets telling the constituents that "rules bad for business, business made us great, everything else tried has failed".
4) Deregulation is the pill, libertarianism/freedom/liberty talk is the bacon wrapped around it
5) The city male realizes that he has more in common with the bigshot businessman that he thought, its only a few billions that set them apart
6) Furthermore, it has been accepted as an axiom that anyone can make it in US (immigrant went from poor being rich feelgood story on cnbc anyone?)
Business establishment is legitimate power in the US, also they are not being pro-establishment, they are being pro let-me-do-this-thats-the-only-thing-i-have-going-for-me
Also, let's ditch the terms good/evil. They are straight up juvenile.
Half the readers here work for the FANGS.
"Don't talk shit about the hand that feeds you" and all that.