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Comment by ai_fry_ur_brain | Hacker News Reader

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People take pride in wearing handmade watches

As of today, I've never heard of anyone taking pride in using a SaaS or frequenting a website or an app because it was handcrafted. Maybe some day

I think there's a ton of examples where this is true for lower level stuff like open source where you see the internals.

For commerical products it certainly exists too, for example in those cases where you know the product is built by one person or a small group of people who you absolutely know take extraordinary care to get all the details right, and it shows through as a really nice intangible feeling when you're using the product.

That (kind of rare to be honest) 'oh this is just really well done' feeling.

Websites no, but there have been many Mac apps that I have paid for even though a lower quality free option existed.

You're completely wrong.

Platforms that are obviously vibe slop are almost entirely ignored by those that value quality.

If your product has that cheap stench of AI I'll never trust it, I'll instantly think the creators are chumps and I'll look for any alternative that doesn't have that stench.

They all have that stench.

This is not a choice and it's not about labour, as usual. It's about the product, as usual. Instead of buying any quartz watch that keeps basically perfect time, people pay thousands of times more for a watch that's worse at timekeeping as a status symbol, or because they appreciate watches as art or as constructions. You would have needed your analogy to say why these same reasons would apply to hand-made software.

The correct argument is, again, about product and not labour. Hand-made software still is a better product, and so it's worth paying for.

I’m glad mass manufactured watches exist so the common man can afford them.

Fortunately the economics of infinitely copyable software aren't going anywhere. If there is actually a sizable market, it can be served with relatively little cost, compared to hand-producing physical goods. I am not fully convinced there will be such a market, though.

The Swiss govt has done much to protect Swiss labor from external market pressures; whether the watch is a handmade movement or quartz is irrelevant.

If it were quartz it would be needing to justify why it costs more than $10. The Swiss government doesn't do anything to get people to buy Swiss watches. They're good status symbols, so rich people buy them.

Its like telling animals dont get domesticated, dont get exploited, dont get eaten, think about the farmer, be more like him.

Its not going to happen. For the first time in history we have tools that talk back. Adults arent mentally prepped for that. They will cling to old models of reality they know, when reality has changed. The kids on the other hand can learn and adapt better, but learning takes time and happens through trial and error.

All anyone in a position of responsibility can do, just like parents, protect the kids as much as you can as they keep falling and trust with time they will learn to adapt to the new reality.

The difference, and I think we as an industry will have to reconcile this depending on how advanced llms get, is that you don’t see the quality in handmade code like you do in a high end watch or a luxury automobile or appliance. The veneer might be identical. It’s going to be tough to convince people that handmade software has added value or quality over slop. I still believe it does right now, but that might not always be true. And this is an industry that has pumped out a lot of sloppy code for decades, even before it was actual slop.

well this is not exactly unique to software. It is not a given that the 'handmade' nature of a product (luxury or otherwise) manifests in anything tangible or self-evidently superior. Luxury products in general overwhelmingly treat the crafted nature of the product as almost solely an investment in narrative (read: marketing) and market positioning, not an actual material outcome.

I like this take a lot. Posting a counter-example not because I disagree but because I think it’s interesting.

Ghostty is a terminal emulator with a pretty good narrative. The author is very accessible on podcasts to go over the story. It is also actually very good though. I think the jump in performance and usability put it on the map before the narrative could help push it further. The product does have to actually be good before the crafted nature can be invested into.

> you don’t see the quality in handmade code like you do in a high end watch or a luxury automobile or appliance.

But you can't see the "quality" in a high end watch either. They are inferior to low-end watches by every metric you can imagine.

Maybe not the actual quality, but if I put a $50k Rolex on the table and a $50 Timex, 98/100 people will choose the Rolex, right or wrong.

And if you put a $50k Rolex and a $20 Shmolex on the table?

What're you talking about? I can instantly detect if software was created with AI. It has a stench much like a cheap product who's materials off gassing, and Im certainly not using it over the handmade solution. There will always be two options, like in clothes or watches.

Wow. At least I know who downvoted me.

Maybe you should take a step back and realize that sofware developers themselves are not the primary purchasers of most software. The average joe or jane purchaser doesn't have some magical AI slop detector, especially if the UI is well done.

I didnt downvote you, I cant. But I have yet to see a vibe coded project have good UI/UX. You'd be surprised how much thought and intention goes into making a great UI. An LLM simply cant, guided or unguided.

I actually predict that frontend devs and designers will become more valuable in the coming years as people (stupidly) abandon these disciplines.

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