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Comment by bandrami | Hacker News Reader

OK so this comes back to the question I started this subthread with: where is this better software? Why isn't someone selling it to me? I've been told for a year it's coming any day now (though invariably the next month I'm told last month's tools were in fact crap and useless compared to the new generation so I just have to wait for this round to kick in) and at some point I do have to actually see it if you expect me to believe it's real.

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How would you know if all software written in the last six months shipped X% faster and was Y% better?

Why would you think you have your finger on the pulse of general software trends like that when you use the same, what, dozen apps every week?

Just looking at my own productivity, as mere sideprojects this month, I've shipped my own terminal app (replaced iTerm2), btrfs+luks NAS system manager, overhauled my macOS gamepad mapper for the app store, and more. All fully tested and really polished, yet I didn't write any code by hand. I would have done none of that this month without AI.

You'd need some real empirics to pick up productivity stories like mine across the software world, not vibes.

It's on the people pushing AI as the panacea that has changed things to show workings. Not someone saying "I've not seen evidence of it". Otherwise it's "vibes" as you put it.

Right, I'm sympathetic to the idea that LLMs facilitate the creation of software that people previously weren't willing to pay for, but then kind of by definition that's not going to have a big topline economic impact.

Well, we don't know - that's capturing 2 scenarios: software that whose impact is low as reflected by lack of investment and legitimately useful improvements that just weren't valued (fix slow code, reduce errors and increase uptime, address security concerns) because the cost was not appreciated / papered over by patches / company hasn't been bitten yet

Why did you add that "weren't willing to pay for" condition?

Most of the software I replaced was software I was paying for (iStat Menus, Wispr Flow, Synology/Unraid). That I was paying for a project I could trivially take on with AI was one of the main incentives to do it.

Here's an example: https://eudaimonia-project.netlify.app/

I'm happy to sell it to you, though it is also free. I guided Claude to write this in three weeks, after never having written a line of JavaScript or set up a server before. I'm sure a better JavaScript programmer than I could do this in three weeks, but there's no way I could. I just had a cool idea for making advertising a force for good, and now I have a working version in beta.

I'd say it is better software, but better is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Claude's execution is average and always will be, that's a function of being a prediction engine. But I genuinely think the idea is better than how advertising works today, and this product would not exist at all if I had to write it myself. And I'm someone who has written code before, enough that I was probably a somewhat early adopter to this whole thing. Multiply that by all the people whose ideas get to live now, and I'm sure some ideas will prove to be better even with average execution. Like an llm, that's a function of statistics.

In glad you made something with it you wanted to make, and as a fan of Aristotle I'm always happy to see the word eudaimonia out there. Best of luck. That said I don't understand what this does or why I would want the tokens it mentions.

Yeah, I gotta make a video walkthrough. Its basically a goal tracker combined with an ad filter - write what you want out of life and block ads, it replaces them with ads that actually align with your long term goals instead of distracting from them. The tokens let you add ads to the network, though you also get some for using the goal tracker.

Though this does suggest one possible answer to me: the new software is largely web applications, and the web is just a space I don't spend much time anymore other than a few retro sites like this

No, you don't need a video walkthrough. You need that damn web page to explain – in plain language – what this is and what it's good for.

They can't, they never did the work to discover what it's good for because they skipped over implementation and concept validation.

This concept will never work outside of their own head. People continue to think producing something is the hard part my word.

Would the above explanation be better? The website is there because stripe needs a landing page and the text is there because I'm trying to communicate the aspiration the instantiation I can always explain in detail if someone wants to hear how that would work.

> Would the above explanation be better?

No idea. I certainly didn't get it. Goal tracker is one thing, ad blocker is another thing. Why would I want to combine them? And why would I want to see any ads at all? Perhaps I'm just not the target audience...

Maybe not, but you might want to see ads because 1) they fund a huge part of the free internet so you would at least want other people to see them and 2) if they were targeted not at what you're most likely to buy today but at what would most help you achieve goals you'r struggling with, they'd be a constant source of useful information and motivation as you go about your day. Aligning incentives between you and advertisers turns ads from friction to tailwind, and advertisers already want to align with what incentivises you if the alternative is having their ads blocked.

That second point is the part that seems obvious to me but I have a hard time communicating.

++1

I didnt get it either on first glance when scrolling down the whole page

Wow, that us useful feedback, thanks! I'll update that this weekend.

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