Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

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the thing you haven't come to terms with is that it is more important to ship than it is to worry about the issues in the future. i thought RoR taught everyone that.

the beauty of what's happening today is that AI might produce slop on the first try, but you can also refactor just as easily too. "clean up all !important and optimize the code for speed", is just as easy of a prompt and it'll go off and do a fantastic job at that. that is what the OP was talking about in his article.

you don't have a job because you're not adapting to this new world order quickly enough. i predict that there will be insane demand for porting existing applications off these over priced SASS contracts and building tailored products for businesses. as much as they are trying to convince people, you don't need a $5m/yr salesforce / servicenow contract when you understand the business model and can envision a better solution to the actual problem out of thin air.

i'm burning 500m+ tokens a day on a $200/mo subscription. it is creating 10000x more value for me. it is no longer how much you know HTML/CSS, it is how well you know how to get AI to do what you want it to do and the only way to develop that skill, is to do it.

> you don't need a $5m/yr salesforce / servicenow contract when you understand the business model

I'm sure many people will think that; and I'm also fairly confident that 5 years later they'll take their obscure, bug-ridden, vibecoded monstrosity that nobody really understands, throw it out, and get a salesforce contract. Technical debt doesn't disappear just because you have agents working for you; in fact, it is exploding right now, and I would bet good money that 2-3 years for now there will be a flourishing cottage industry of consultancies specialized in dealing with such monstrosities.

Context is important in a response like this. Giacomo is a Sr. Presales consultant at a SaaS company that sells "The AI operating system for modern Finance." Of course you're adverse to things because it is a direct threat to what your business offers today.

If I can vibe code up a solution that fixes my problems for $200, it doesn't matter what happens in 5 years. The rate of change that's happening today in the increase in quality of the output of the models, I can just tell it to fix whatever we have and make it better.

Spoken with the true arrogance of someone who has no idea about the real world of finance.

When your software has to produce legal documents, satisfy auditors, and certify a bunch of things to shareholders and governments, I'm sorry but your $200 vibecoded hack is not going to cut it. You will have to get it certified, to get it audited, to get it secured according to this and that legislation, to prove where it gets each and every number and how it modifies it, and then you will have to maintain it because standards and laws change every other day. Sure, get an agent to cook you up a full consolidation solution, see how quickly you get laughed out of the room by grown-ups.

Btw, I am not "adversed to things" - the stuff we do has agents built-in, that do all sorts of wonderful things. The difference is that we can demonstrate that they do them right, with financial intelligence standardized and battle-tested across thousands of customers all over the world. Our customers don't have to worry about rewriting their pile of vibed hacks, or about being humiliated by auditors, because we take care of all that stuff for them. That's worth more than the pennies you save by having cousin' Vinnie vibe up a multidimensional financial engine that takes 3 days to calculate trillions of useless intersections before falling over.

You sound like someone who was adversed to cell phone cameras taking over film.

Get ready. AI is coming for every single industry, full steam.

> Get ready. AI is coming for every single industry, full steam.

It is, indeed. The C-Suites at every company are making plans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmU9uovmT2A

Hilarious!

But more real... Giacomo fails to take into account the concept of when OpenAI decides to create an audited financial service that guarantees that their output is valid. ChatGPT Work is already a beginning of that future.

That's like saying Google offering GMail ended webmail - there are still plenty of webmail services around: some better, some worse, some more specialised. The same will be true of most sectors.

AI is another tool in the toolbox, not magic. It's not about being pro or against it, it's here already (hey, we sell it!) and obviously it will continue to get better; but it won't magically solve everything for $2.

i've written smtp servers.

it has the best spam control on the planet.

i'd never use anything else.

That's great to know, Jon. I suspect non-US governments have a different opinion. Heck, even the US government likely has a different opinion. Not to mention Google competitors in any other sector.

one out of 10000000 customers.

Have you any idea of how many businesses need a financial consolidation tool, out of the total number of businesses out there?

No, of course you don't, you write email servers.

Sure, your local garage will now do their accounting in vibed apps instead of vibed Excel files. I suspect multinationals will choose not to.

I can see I'm under your skin as you're trying to make this personal. I have a long history of being early and correct with many things. What is transforming under your nose, faster than anything ever before, will take you for surprise, unless make a conscious decsion to wake up. Do yourself a favor and listen to what he's saying... https://youtu.be/NYFGCESmikA?t=2883

I was not the one who brought personal qualifications into a public argument, Jon. I guess you don't like it when your lack of specialized knowledge becomes evident.

As I said, I already know what AI is doing - I already use it just fine, I even help building and selling it. The impact it is having is obvious. But like recipe books did not turn everyone into Michelin chefs, it won't turn hacks into rigorous builders of trusted systems.

So you think AI will only ever be a recipe book? That's the disconnect we have in opinion.

Bro, "AI" can't even program decently. It's still, to this day, worse than every human I've ever worked with. The idea that it's going to take over every industry is laughable.

it is funny having some anon tell me something that is 100% different from my own experience and i've been coding for 30+ years now.

Ha! you think anyone cares about regulatory compliance? no, they only need the appearance of regulatory compliance

Everyone has a plan until they get sued into oblivion.

“the thing you haven't come to terms with…”

Why the fuck do so many people write like this nowadays? Quit acting like you have access to some sort of universal knowledge or unique insight into other people’s state of mind; it’s extremely obnoxious. You’re presumably trying to communicate with adult professionals, not children.

If you're "reluctantly using" HN, maybe you should stop because it doesn't seem healthy for you.

Yes, I do have some unique insights based on decades of experience building products and businesses. People who think that AI is going to produce shit vibe code forever, deserve the decency to be warned about what is coming.

Seriously, I'm constantly seeing lines like "you're going to be left behind", "this is your fear talking", "keep lying to yourself", "enjoy it while it lasts", etc. What is it about AI that made people start talking like Marvel supervillains?

archagon is anti-ai, no longer works in tech, and hasn't written code in a long while. he's responded to my comment below with something very angry and hateful, and then deleted it. i get the email notifications though, so i saw it.

for those of us who have been coding non-stop for decades, it has made me fall in love with code again. i'm excited, based on personal experience about something that is truly revolutionary. why shouldn't i talk about it with praise and go up against the doubters who are just angry and aren't putting the same level of effort in?

Here is the comment I deleted:

“Same to you. You’re all over this thread with smug comments and cheap snipes. Why are you even here? Are you gaining anything at all from this discussion?

There are loads and loads of people on this site with decades of experience building products and businesses. Don’t talk down to them.”

I deleted it because, in my haste, I did not have time to fully vet the first paragraph. Other than that, I stand by my words on basic netiquette 100%. If this comes off as “very angry and hateful,” you may be a bit sheltered.

As for the grandparent comment, my personal feeling is that this type of rhetoric stems from insecurity and/or contagion from the deluge of AI corp propaganda we’re all drowning in. No previous technological advance elicited this sort of persistent cheerleading — not smartphones, nor the internet, nor personal computing itself. (There was no need for it: you just used the new thing and if it worked, then it worked, QED.)

Since you decided to delete your anger filled post, I’ll respond privately.

I genuinely wish you the best.

Best,

Jon

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