I don't actually mind AI-aided development, a tool is a tool and should be used if you find it useful, but I think the vibe coded show HN projects are overall pretty boring. They generally don't have a lot of work put into them, and as a result, the author (pilot?) hasn't generally thought too much about the problem space, and so there isn't really much of a discussion to be had.

The cool part about pre-AI show HN is you got to talk to someone who had thought about a problem for way longer than you had. It was a real opportunity to learn something new, to get an entirely different perspective.

I feel like this is what AI has done to the programming discussion. It draws in boring people with boring projects who don't have anything interesting to say about programming.

I launched an idea 75 days ago, here as Show HN. It snowballed into a little community and a game that now sells every day. Maybe not an overnight sensation but the encouragement I found in the community was the motivation that i needed to take it further to a bigger audience.

It was not just a product launch for me. I was, sort-of in a crisis. I had just turned 40 and had dark thoughts about not being young, creative and energetic anymore. The outlook of competing with 20 year old sloptimists in the job market made me really anxious.

Upon seeing people enjoying my little game, even if it's just a few HNers, I found an "I still got it" feeling that pushed me to release on Steam, to good reviews.

It was never about the money, it was about recovering my self confidence. Thank you HN, I will return the favour and be the guy checking the new products you launch. If Show HN is drowning, i will drown with it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137953

I did a Show HN a few years ago on another account. It got no upvotes but that website/app has generated over $6m in revenue in that time (over $4.5m profit). Not sure what my point is but thought I'd share

Perhaps it's the right moment to start an AI Show HN (Vibe HN as recommended above), as I assume more than half of Show HN is now from ChatGPT/Claude, and it's impossible to cut through this noise with something reliable that humans craft over years.

It's fair to give the audience a choice to learn about an AI-created product or not.

An additional factor missing in the post I think Is AI.

Before, projects were more often carefully human crafted.

But nowadays we expect such projects to be "vibe coded" in a day. And so, we don't have the motivation to invest mental energy in something that we expect to be crap underneath and probably a nice show off without future.

Even if the result is not the best in the world, I think that what interest us is to see the effort.

Had a funny experience with this some weeks ago. I started developing a small side project and after a week I wondered if this existed already. To my surprise, someone had already built something relatively similar _with the exact same name_ (though I had chosen mine as a placeholder, still funny though) only 2 weeks before, and posted it in Show HN.

I took a look at the project and it was a 100k+ LoC vibe-coded repository. The project itself looked good, but it seemed quite excessive in terms of what it was solving. It made me think, I wonder if this exists because it is explicitly needed, or simply because it is so easy for it to exist?

The fact that the volume is exploding but the graveyard is also exploding, is a sign that the system is working, not that it's broken (the filter is working).

I did 3 ShowHN in 2024 (outside of the scope of this analysis), one with 306 points, another with 126 points and the third with... 2. There's always been some kind of unpredictability in ShowHN.

But I think the number one criteria for visibility is intelligibility: the project has to be easy to understand immediately, and if possible, easy to install/verify. IMHO, none of the three projects that the author complains didn't get through the noise qualify on this criteria. #2 and #3 are super elaborate (and overly specific); #1 is the easiest to understand (Neohabit) but the home page is heavy in examples that go in all directions, and the github has a million graphics that seem quite complex.

Simplify and thou shall be heard.

I find this very interesting, but am I being dense here? https://www.arthurcnops.blog/images/hn-show-dead-one-point.s...

The legend says SHNs are getting worse, but surely if the % of SHN posts with 1 point is going DOWN (as per graph) then it's getting better? Either I am dense or the legends are the wrong way round no?

Reminds me of the quote: "Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded"

Some of it is "I wish things I think are cool got more upvotes". Fare enough, I've seen plenty of things I've found cool not get much attention. That's just the nature of the internet.

The other point is show and share HN stories growing in volume, which makes sense since it's now considerably easier to build things. I don't think that's a bad thing really, although curation makes it more difficult. Now that pure agentic coding has finally arrived IMO, creativity and what to build are significantly more important. They always were but technical ability was often rewarded much more heavily. I guess that sucks for technical people.

Side question: I love the charts in your blog post. Would you be able to share how they were generated?

I am a major advocate for AI assisted development.

Having said that, it used to feel part of an exclusive club to have the skills and motivation to put a finished project on HN. For me, posting a Show HN was a huge deal - usually done after years of development - remember that - when development of something worthwhile took years and was written entirely by hand?

I don't mind much though - I love that programming is being democratized and no longer only for the arcane wizards of the back room.

Seems like a sign of things to come - software becomes personalized and while having the cost driven to zero of commoditization

The small indie developer ain't dead yet, and from where I sit you could drive a star destroyer through the gaps in what software has been built so far.

It's only that you can't claim any of the top shelf prizes by vibe coding

If show HN is getting diluted and flooded then maybe yhere is opportunity for someone to make a website for showing off your shiny new project.

Something rapid fire, fun, categorized maybe. Just a showcase to show off what you've done.

You get things posted that you can generate yourself in a day using a model. So it's like, great, but also no.

> Show HN of course isn't dead. You could even say it's more alive than ever.

You could argue it's dead in the sense of "dead internet theory". Yes, more projects than ever are being submitted, but they were not created by humans. Maybe they are being submitted by humans, for now.

It's turning into an influencer economy, similar to twitch streaming, youtube or only fans.

It is indeed, and it is very much ripe for a serious review. Which is a pity because I think it is one of HN's most powerful pieces.

It's not just Show HN. Other parts of HN are drowning too.

I've long wanted something like Blog HN as a way to post things things that I wrote without feeling guilty of submitting my own site. Things that authors themselves write and post are often a good signal. But this should be completely separate from any new products, etc.

I think that Show HN should be used sparingly. It feels like collective community abuse of it will lead to people filtering them out mentally, if not deliberately. They're very low signal these days.

Great article btw, really loved to see these kind of numbers, thanks.

Time for a new category? "Slop HN: Claude built this mini tool for me" - would be lol to see the "slop" in the header right in the middle of "show | jobs" -> "show | slop | jobs"

This aligns with my experience. It's good to have it properly analyzed.

If this effect is noticeable on an obscure tech forum, one can only imagine the effect on popular source code forges, the internet at large, and ultimately on people. Who/what is using all this new software? What are the motivations of their authors? Is a human even involved in the creation anymore? The ramifications of all this are mind-boggling.

Yeah, I don't think that LLM output is appropriate for Shown HNs.

was just asking for something like this yesterday, would be interesting to see how account age factors in

Sadly, this problem isn't specific to HN either, any reddit sub that is even remotely related to software is absolutely flooded with "look at my slop" posts.

It feels like the age of creating some cool new software on your own to solve a problem you had, sharing it and finding other people who had the same problem, and eventually building a small community around it is coming to a close. The death of open source, basically.