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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

>Now there is a plagiarism machine built on top of decades of this work that seemingly solves 3 and promises to solve 2 (badly, but usually this matters little

I think people underestimate just how much users scorn buggy, flaky technology.

The main issue with solid, reliable technology which Just Works is that users have relatively few reliable cues to distinguish that from vibe coded crap.

A vibe coded piece of shit looks very similar to a well engineered product made with care. That's a problem which needs to be solved.

self hosted communities are reacting to this by trying to detect signals of if a product is vibe coded but that in and of itself is still quite a poor quality cue.

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Where are these well engineered products made with care? I would love to use more tech like that.

Unfortunately most sites and apps have been low quality and getting worse since well before AI coding became a thing. Examples: Lowes, Home Depot, American Airlines - all shockingly bad for companies of that size.

Apple used to be the standard bearer for that. These days I'm not so sure.

You just dated yourself to a very specific time. Before that, Sun was the gold standard and Apple was known for terrible software. I still use a 30 year old text editor because it just works better than modern editors. There are plenty of examples. If you don't know of any, its because you just accept the slop with marketing dollars behind it. I can't say I blame you, finding good software seems to require more and more effort with each passing year. I blame the amount of money in software for that. Gotta take the good with the bad.

Let's make it!

A lot of infrastructure. Linux (despite the recent VM escapes found with AI assistance). nginx. openssh. coreutils. Is all solid but also just operates the computer and doesn't actually solve any problem itself.

> I think people underestimate just how much users scorn buggy, flaky technology.

Users do hate it, but they are also very used to being forced to use it anyway. They've already been beaten into a state of resignation and learned helplessness. Most will curse under the breath, a small fraction will bitch about it online, but they'll all pay for whatever slop is thrown to them and will rarely look for alternatives even when they are free and easy to find.

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