The exoskeleton framing is comforting but it buries the real shift: taste scales now. Before AI, having great judgment about what to build didn't matter much if you couldn't also hire 10 people to build it. Now one person with strong opinions and good architecture instincts can ship what used to require a team.

That's not augmentation, that's a completely different game. The bottleneck moved from "can you write code" to "do you know what's worth building." A lot of senior engineers are going to find out their value was coordination, not insight.

▲

eCa 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> That's not augmentation, that's a completely different game

Not saying that this comment is ai written, but this phrasing is the em-dash of 2026.

▲

tlonny 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Look at his other comments - its textbook LLM slop. Its a fucking tragedy that people are letting their OpenClaws loose on HN but I can't say I'm surprised. I desperately need to find a good network of developers because I think the writing is on the wall for message boards like these...

▲

swah 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's absolutely correct, I fear.. In english those looks bad/funny/lazy...

But in code, its probably ok. Its idiomatic code, I guess.

▲

dsjoerg 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

True but also, the bot is right

	▲	dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Perhaps? The thing is, I don't come to HN comments to read what an LLM has to say. If that's what I wanted then I'd paste the contents of the article into one of them and ask. What's the point of coming here for opinions of others in the field when we're met with something that wasn't even written by a human being?

▲

bspammer 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

it'll be interesting to see if people start writing worse as a form of countersignalling. deliberately making spleling mistakes, not caring about capital letters, or punctuation or grammar or proper writing techniques and making really long run-on sentences that don't go anywhere but hey at least the person reading it will know its written by a human right

▲

croisillon 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"the real shift" is another telltale

▲

RealityVoid 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can build prototypes real fast, and that's cool. You can't really build products with it. You can use it at most as an accelerant, but you need it in skilled hands else it goes sideways fast.

▲

IX-103 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think you could build a product with it, but you need to carefully specify the design first. The same amount of actual engineering work needs to go in, but the AI can handle the overhead of implementing small pieces and connecting them together.

In practice, I would be surprised if this saves even 10% of time, since the design is the majority of the actual work for any moderately complex piece of software.

	▲	RealityVoid 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's kind of tricky though because if you want to have a good design, you should be able to do the implementation yourself. You see this with orgs that separate the design and implementation and what messes they create. Having an inability to evaluate the implementation will lead to a bad product.
	▲	skydhash 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Code is also design. It’s a blueprint for the process that is going to do the useful work we want. When something bad happens to the process, we revise its blueprint. And just like blueprint, the docs in natural language shows the why, not the how or the what. The blueprint is the perfect representation of the last two.

▲

tripledry 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My experience exactly, I have some toy projects I've basically "vibe coded" and actually use (ex. CV builder).

Professionally I have an agent generating most code, but if I tell the AI what to do, I guide it when it makes mistakes (which it does), can we really say "AI writes my code".

Still a very useful tool for sure!

Also, I don't actually know if I'm more productive than before AI, I would say yes but mostly because I'm less likely to procrastinate now as tasks don't _feel_ as big with the typing help.

▲

crakhamster01 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> taste scales now.

Not having taste also scales now, and the majority of people like to think they're above average.

Before AI, friction to create was an implicit filter. It meant "good ideas" were often short-lived because the individual lacked conviction. The ideas that saw the light of day were sharpened through weeks of hard consideration and at least worth a look.

Now, anyone who can form mildly coherent thoughts can ship an app. Even if there are newly empowered unicorns, rapidly shipping incredible products, what are the odds we'll find them amongst a sea of slop?

▲

jimbokun 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Uh, that is the dictionary definition of augmentation.

One person with tools that greatly amplify what that person can accomplish.

Vs not having a person involved at all.

▲

iwontberude 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Did you purposely write this to sound like an LLM?

▲

ehnto 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's just good writing structure. I get the feeling many people hadn't been exposed to good structure before LLMs.

LLMs can definitely have a tone, but it is pretty annoying that every time someone cares to write well, they are getting accused of sounding like an LLM instead of the other way around. LLMs were trained to write well, on human writing, it's not surprising there is crossover.

▲

leoedin 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's really not "good" for many people. It's the sort of high-persuasion marketing speak that used to be limited to the blogs of glossy but shallow startups. Now it's been sucked up by LLMs and it's everywhere.

If you want good writing, go and read a New Yorker.

▲

ukuina 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not so sure about that. There are many distinct LLM "smells" in that comment, like "A is true, but it hides something: unrelated to A" and "It's not (just) C, it's hyperbole D".

▲

9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

Kiro 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I personally love that phrasing even if it's a clear tell. Comparisons work well for me to grasp an idea. I also love bullet points.

So yeah, I guess I like LLM writing.

▲

ehnto 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure, but you can read articles that predate LLMs which have the same so called tells.

	▲	lelanthran 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Sure, but you can read articles that predate LLMs which have the same so called tells. Not with such a high frequency, though. We're looking at 1 tell per sentence!

▲

yard2010 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're absolutely right, that isn't just good writing — that's poetry! Do you need further assistance?

▲

energy123 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Contrastive parallelism is an effective rhetorical device if the goal is to persuade or engage. It's not good if your goal is more honest, like pedagogy, curious exploration, discovery. It flattens and shoves things into categorical labels, leading the discussion more towards definitions of words and other sidetracks.

▲

0xpgm 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is such a thing as a distinct LLM writing style that is not just good structure. Anyone who's read more than five books can tell that.

And the comment itself seems completely LLM generated.

	▲	notahacker 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's not just false. It's the antithesis of true. It's not just using rhetorical patterns humans also use which are in some contexts considered good writing. Its overusing them like a high schooler learning the pattern for the first time — and massively overdoing the em dashes and mixing the metaphors
	▲	ehnto 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's true that LLMs have a distinct style, but it does not preclude humans from writing in a similar style. That's where the LLMs got it from, people and training. There's certainly some emergent style that given enough text, you would likely never see from a human. But in a short comment like this, it's really not enough data to be making good judgements.

▲

SCdF 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If it indicates, culturally in the current zeitgeist, that an AI wrote it, it becomes a bad structure.

▲

ForHackernews 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They trained the LLMs on people who think in LinkedIn posts.

▲

forrestthewoods 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> can ship what used to require a team.

Is the shipped software in the room with us now?