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codingdave

21,688 karma · joined November 3, 2013

Old software guy. Pseudo-retired - not seeking permanent work anymore, but I do take on contract gigs to modernize/stabilize legacy platforms.

hikingdave @ gmail.com

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codingdave··on Launching Health in ChatGPT to US Users
Agreed on the problems, but how will an LLM fix any of that? Even if it does somehow give you the right answer, it cannot perform procedures or prescribe medicine. You still need to get an appointment for anything beyond information. Your insurance isn't going to say, "Oh, sure, if chatGPT said you need this, we'll approve it."
codingdave··on Show HN: HN Hall of Fame – browse 3,100 legendary Hacker News links
The fact that things like that get into a production app at all is the bigger point. AI slop doesn't even hit a base level of "it works on my machine". When some piece of an app just doesn't work, regardless of whether it was LLM-generated or not, it means there was no QA done on the app. Or at least, not enough.

That is why the term "AI slop" exists. Not because AI cannot produce working code - we all know it can - but because it breeds a low-effort process where people just slap code into production with no regard to quality.

codingdave··on Ask HN: How to get started with a sustainable bootstrapped business of your own?
> because of the overwhelming demands and random priority changes that expect you work beyond scheduled hours.

Bootstrapping your own thing will give you more of that, not less. It takes an established business to be stabile to the point where the surprises are minimal, the processes are standardized, and the team is built to absorb whatever is thrown at it to handle things without putting in extra hours.

It sounds like you need to find established companies who need some part-time help.

codingdave··on Show HN: HN Hall of Fame – browse 3,100 legendary Hacker News links
This is cool, and clearly a popular post, yet also... doesn't the 'Show HN' guidelines specifically exclude lists and reading material?

With the massive drop in quality that AI has brought to Show HNs, this is a great example of something that truly is cool... but would be equally cool without 'Show HN' in front of the title. We're failing to moderate the site well unless we recommend OP does what the guidelines say and "make a regular submission instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

codingdave··on Sticky Notes on steroids hits your Storyboard and productivity explodes
> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

codingdave··on GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization
If it were commonplace, there wouldn't be a post and discussion about it. Cheap? Arguable - while it didn't cost thousands, it wasn't free. Cheap is in the eye of the beholder. Efficient...How do we even measure that? The massive infrastructure and training to take a product to the point where someone could do this is massive. Ignoring everything behind the scenes and acting like one session and result is the whole picture of efficiency doesn't seem right. And no, nothing produced by AI makes skills irrelevant. That is the whole ongoing argument of whether people are losing cognitive ability by moving their thinking to AI.

Overall, this is an impressive proof of capability. But I wouldn't take that proof as anything more than what it is.

codingdave··on Ask HN: What Is Best for Marketing YouTube or Other Social Media
There is no single answer to that. The best channel depends entirely on what audience your product is for.

FWIW, my most successful products had zero social media marketing. Barely any online marketing at all. Radio and in-person events was our jam.

codingdave··on Claude Code team should try macro so users can complete 3x as many tasks
From the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

> Can I ask people to upvote my submission?

> No. Users should vote for a story because they personally find it intellectually interesting, not because someone has content to promote. We penalize or ban submissions, accounts, and sites that break this rule, so please don't.

And from the Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.

codingdave··on Ask HN: I've told everyone about my startup and its been harder than I thought
It isn't winning or losing. It is just a job that either worked out or did not. And not a waste - even if you all you take away from this is experience and knowledge, that is not a waste.
codingdave··on Ask HN: Having a child before career has taken off
Odds are it won't make a huge difference - everyone has a life to live outside of work. Even if it does cause some career stagnation, any decrease in your career because of having kids is going to be a good thing. Absolutely nobody gets old and then says, "I wish I worked more and spent less time with family."
codingdave··on Ask HN: What are you working on(2026)?
Great, he can provide that feedback on the monthly thread, too. Make that thread better, don't noise up the whole site.
codingdave··on Ask HN: I built it and nobody came. What got you your first users?
If you built this for yourself, then you are your entire market. Either you like it and it is good, or you don't and it is not.

But if you built this to sell to others, you skipped the most important step: Researching the market to know what people want. Your first users come from your research - you call the people who you talked to and say: "I built it."

If you skipped that step, you are just throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping it sticks. Fun for builders, not reliable for actual success.

codingdave··on Ask HN: What are you working on(2026)?
Seriously? There is a monthly thread on this that was just posted 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48884984

Re-posting the same question just creates noise.

codingdave··on Show HN: InteractInk – Anonymous Text Board
Some variation of "Look, I made a place where anonymous traffic can post content" gets posted every couple months. And usually is taken offline within a few hours/days once the author realizes that the tech is not the problem for these types of projects. Content moderation is.
codingdave··on Show HN: Book a Billboard in NYC Times Square
This isn't really a Show HN. There is no product here to try out and discuss - it is just you selling ad space.
codingdave··on At least 105 past YC founders have worked at OpenAI and Anthropic
> will bring less revenue/profit

Call me crazy, but the smartest people I know have rejected maximizing their employer's revenue and profit as their goal. Or even their own company if they go that route. Find a niche, work it, enjoy it, and enjoy the rest of your life, too.

codingdave··on Ask HN: Who build production apps with out seeing code?
That would be insane. Even if you trust the code for the business functionality, you have to do a security review to launch anything in this day and age. Trusting AI to properly secure an app is, to me, straight up negligence.
codingdave··on Ask HN: Advice for first-year CS students?
I fail to see how your past frustrations with the skills of your entry levels hires is OP's problem. OP should fulfill their own learning goals, not try to fit themselves into last century's corporate mold. If they have trouble getting hired because they need some accounting skills (unlikely, btw), they can solve that with a Coursera course or a few weeks at the local community college.

Undergrad is where you learn to learn, learn to think critically, and learn to adapt to changes in the world. Any coursework that fails to focus on those broader learning goals and just teaches vocational skills is an utter waste of their tuition money.

I'm not saying that such info is useless. I fully agree that it can be helpful. But don't burn tuition and college credits on that. Learn things in college that are more complex and require more engagement. Take yourself to a higher level of thinking, so instead of worrying about how some future interview at an insurance company would go, you never even have to step on the path that would make you want an interview at an insurance company in the first place.

codingdave··on Samsung Health app threatens data deletion if users opt out AI training
Because HIPAA only applies to specific people and organizations who have a formal role in your health care. It is not a universal law applicable to everyone, and Samsung is not your healthcare provider, insurer, nor part of any related entity.
codingdave··on How does a Dev's job look like in a few years?
So based on the comments, I'm the only person who think our jobs will be diving into years-old LLM-generated code to fix it all, and laughing: "Oh my, do you all remember when the entire industry burned 5 years and b/trillions of dollars just to try to force a use case to work that wasn't even the right match for the tools?"

I'm not even trying to be snarky. I just see that LLMs already work fine in almost every other use case. Better than fine - they have been implemented and they work, and don't need much more advancement. But coders are still fighting it, coming up with more and more elaborate setups, spending more and more money, just to get to a level of coding that is passable. Not great, not better than human, just a "CRUD apps work." level of passable.

Once the exec teams stop pushing the FOMO from down on top, I think people will settle down into a much lower level of AI assistance. It will continue to be used, but we'll have it boilerplate the simple stuff out for us, while we focus on the meatier problems. And that is not all that different than pre-AI: whip the easy stuff out, then work on the hard stuff.

codingdave··on Is vibe coding worth it? What the numbers say
It is absolutely insane that this article dismisses all the security problems with a simple: "spend an afternoon on it, all will be well."
codingdave··on Hourly Billing Encourages Lying
That is a pile of false premises. You don't bill for ideas, you bill for implementation. you don't re-use old project work on a new client without their permission and negotiating the cost - doing so opens up all kinds of legal risks on both sides. AI has nothing to do with billing, they are simply paying for your time, and the same goes if your work doesn't go well.

You bill for your time. They pay for your time. That is all. If you find yourself coming up with edge cases where it doesn't seem like hourly billing is fair, you don't lie about your hours - you discuss it with your contact. Charging for different hours than what was actually worked is straight-up fraud.

codingdave··on Search for isRecord on any open source codebase
You've been called out a couple times already about spamming your own stuff. That isn't what HN is about.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

codingdave··on GPT-5.6-Sol just accidentally deleted almost ALL of my Mac's files
Oh no. Someone gave an AI access to delete all the files on their system and then an AI deleted all the files on their system.

And then that same person basically said, "I'll try a different model."

Lesson clearly not learned.

codingdave··on We reached 300 repos visualized
HN Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."

codingdave··on Questions for the Team During Onboarding
That isn't the title on the page. Nor the title applied to the questions. It looks to just be AI slop/summary of: https://piechowski.io/post/how-i-audit-a-legacy-rails-codeba...
codingdave··on What if users start cloning SaaS using AI
I'm not sure "SaaSpocalypse" is anything more than hyperbole, but there is a grain of truth behind the thought - What I'm seeing is not companies saying "We should re-write this product we use" as much as it is resellers saying "We can be more than middle-men if we create our own."
codingdave··on What if users start cloning SaaS using AI
You could clone easily before AI. When learning a language, "Build a twitter clone" is a tutorial project.

That doesn't give you the business. It give you no users, no market, no branding. You don't have the operations set up to run at scale, nor the customer base to even need it. Not to mention the leadership to build out a vision. "Clone someone else" is actually a bit of a red flag in terms of vision.

If anything, the ease of launching an MVP should prove what many folks already know - coding is not the bottleneck that prevents business success. It is the tool that allows you to step up to the starting line.

codingdave··on If you're a button, you have one job
You are talking about the label on the button. The button does one thing. The label does one thing. You put the two together and you have UX.
codingdave··on Ask HN: New employeer not providing equipment
It isn't actually about the machine you use. It is about why they choose not to give your the tools you need to do the job. If they cannot afford it, how can you believe they will afford your paycheck, or even keep the doors opens? IF they refuse to give you the resources to do the job on your first day, what will happen when you need something else down the road? Or are they just trying to minimize their expenses and resources give to employees?

Using your machine "until I found out whether they were serious enough to properly supply the necessities." makes no sense whatsoever. They aren't. You don't need to waste any energy finding out, they fact that they asked gave you your answer.

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