God damn, we are living in the future.

I love this so much.

Designs like this would never have seen the light of day in the cellphone incrementalism / corporate memphis era of tech. Now people can be weird and awesome again.

This is 1980's cyberpunk / late-90's Matrix / early-00's sci-fi UI. Great ideas that died to frutiger aero (which isn't a bad design aesthetic) and flat design (which is).

This is fun and it's got great colors and I love it.

It's so refreshing to see this.

AI rules. This is the best timeline.

▲

andersonpico an hour ago | parent | next [-]

What do you mean designs like this? This is 2016-cyberpunk-neon-era inspired by video game interfaces, these are not uncommon at all. Google something like "discord cyberpunk theme" or "cyberpunk rice site:reddit.com/r/unixporn" and you'll find endless examples. This isn't suprising at all obviously.

▲

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

I feel that AI has deeply diminished my ability to be weird and awesome, because my weird and awesome takes time and the results I can share with others are outshined by the machine.

▲

jjcm an hour ago | parent | next [-]

IMO what makes things awesome is human hours invested.

The ramen shop website above is pretty, but it's a veneer. It's not weird and awesome, it's just a representation of a site. I spent about... 7 minutes of my life making it. It's a tech demo, nothing more.

If someone actually poured their heart and soul into a vision for a cyberpunk themed ramen cart, and happened to use this because they didn't have the capabilities or funds to do a proper design, suddenly it becomes less of a veneer, and more just a component in the wider vision of that individual. Their human hours poured into the wider thing that's the business becomes what matters.

Ideally what AI does is it amplifies the hours we do pour into things that are weird and awesome, it doesn't replace them.

▲

ultimafan 40 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Strongly agree, I feel like my passion for development as a whole has waned away as AI has gotten more prevalent.

We do things to achieve some end result but it's the journey there that is the most cathartic to me. The "skilled crafts" element of development where careful deliberation and hours of tinkering to get any kind of appreciable output you can admire has been replaced with a one stop dopamine button that skips the whole process that I could find myself getting lost in.

I've taken up carpentry/metal working as a result. Maybe someday we'll have live in robots that do the same for those hobbies that AI did for programmers but I can't see it happening any time soon.

	▲	hangrybear666 7 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah I feel the same. That's why I've canceled my claude subscription and code everything by hand again, because building skill and mastery in a craft is fun and rewarding. Having a machine do it for me is neither. Fortunately coding is my hobby so there is zero pressure to optimize it. At my workplace management is pushing AI, so I am using it in order to establish sensible and thoughtful applications of it and in order to know when to call out colleagues for pushing mindless automation out of complacency or blind obedience.

▲

jjcm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Designs are here if you want to play with em: https://diffui.ai/app/canvas/68c5bb3d-467e-4841-b49d-c008e72...

This was just from a prompt "A cyberpunk themed ramen food cart website. Should feature menu, locations, and an ability to put in an order for pickup. Simple and clean website with angular cyberpunk microglyphs, pink/teal colors."

▲

aaa_aaa 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No we are not living in future. Design is ugly, and immediate put off because it smells AI.

▲

FranzFerdiNaN 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Reading your comment I had to think of that tweet about someone taking a part of a Monet painting and claimed it was AI generated, and people immediately started calling it horrible and soulless and smelling like AI.

▲

bonoboTP an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Obviously. Artistic value is not in the object, but in the relationships to other humans. The point is not Monet but the people you discuss Monet with. Monet is a tribal rallying point you can synchronize around. AI is not as good for this, because it's cheap. It's not scarce enough. And doesn't offer a human story you can bond around.

▲

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

Well this is no Monet for sure.

▲

newsy-combi an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Humans are capable of producing slop too. Maybe the cutout does look like AI. Given Monet's blurry style and repetitive content (he made 250 water lily paintings), this is not surprising. When you strip the cutout of its context, it can look more like AI too because the lighting and composition will look arbitraty compared to the whole picture.

Btw, if websites would only include the frontend dev's own hand painted images, we would also revolt at the sight of human slop. It's not just AI.

The whole point is that good artists are capable of producing non-slop, and to this day they're the only group of which this is reliably true.

	▲	tackta 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It is because it is an image on a screen. Water Lilies are enormous paintings. They are breathtaking in person because of their scale. Monet wouldn't be Monet if he had only produced images on a screen. Art is good or it is shit, based on personal taste. Just like food, no one can tell me what food tastes good or tastes bad. AI Art seems to produce strong emotions in people who don't go to art galleries. I love modern art, I am a huge art snob but if you want to see slop, go to any modern art gallery. Personally, I would say for my taste, at least 70% of all art at any gallery is basically shit. Like food also, the presentation matters. To believe there is no possible way to print out a 6 foot tall by 10 foot long AI generated image that would look awesome hanging in a gallery is stupid.

▲

HaZeust 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Then tell it that, and it'll give you the output you desire.

▲

wilkystyle an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This comment resonated with me so much, and it seems to be a minority view (at least on this website).

I have found myself empowered by AI to tackle all sorts of things that would have too high of a barrier to entry for me to want to spend my limited time on as a busy father who is also working at a small startup.

And when I say that, I do NOT mean that I can crank out a bunch of slop and label it as something I produced even though I don't understand the code. I mean that I can do things like go back to college math that I never appreciated at the time and honestly felt too scared of. I mean having an on-demand math tutor that ask clarifying questions to as I struggle through the problem sets.

I have found that it actually accelerates learning how to code in various problem domains because I can tell it to answer my questions at a conceptual level and be a sounding board, but to never actually write code for me. It can review the code I write and gently nudge me without giving away the answers, so that I still struggle through the learning process and actually gain the knowledge.

And finally, for the first time in like 10 years of feeling overwhelmed and daunted by the prospect of learning game development (I have no background in that), I have found Codex to be an incredible boon for learning with the Godot engine. It helps me understand the terminology so that I know what to search for and what documentation to read. It helps me map my computer science knowledge from other domains into the game world, and to understand why things are structured the way they are. And because Godot saves all of the scenes and geometry and lighting and shaders to the file system as text files, Codex can inspect the results of the work I'm doing in the IDE and help me track down things I'm stuck on, and explain what the issue is. For example, why my pre-baked global illumination lightmap is breaking my ambient lighting configuration.

I know it has never been easier to cheat and skip the hard work that results in actually learning something, but for me, personally, I cannot believe the incredible value that $20 a month has provided me. I have never been more excited and eager to dive into tackling hard things I had previously been afraid of or simply too overwhelmed to attempt.

It has never been easier to quickly prototype and get a feel for some idea you have in your head to see if it even has legs. Simply seeing a quick prototype of an idea is often all of the excitement and fuel I need to then take it and make it a real project.

▲

mainmailman an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Unrelated question, what’s your favorite flavor of Kool Aid?

▲

theappsecguy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We are going through yet another generational wealth transfer and people are being squeezed to the absolute brim with layoffs and daunting lack of career prospects.

But sure, lets cheer that funky website designs are back on the menu…

▲

Mtinie 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Assuming no change from the baseline, I’d rather have one positive thing versus nothing positive.

▲

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

Why don’t you start a movement to fight for equality, and I’ll join you? Why are you still here and not taking actions?

In the mean time, I’ll unashamedly continue to cheer for creativity and innovation. Note: I don’t even like this website design.

▲

kypro 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'll add to this...

The "funky" websites of the past were mostly a result of tech immaturity and a lack of profit motive.

Businesses have been able to easily install templates like this for at least a decade. They don't because stuff like this looks cool but isn't very functional.

AI isn't going to make your local restaurant have a funky website, it's just going to make everyone who use to work directly and indirectly for that company unemployable. And even the local restaurant will close down because they can't compete with the multi-national competitor that has automated their kitchen with AI.

	▲	andersonpico an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I agree with most of your comment with one exception: It will never be economically viable to replace kitchen staff with AI.

▲

ai_fry_ur_brain 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because they're incredibly ugly

▲

echelon 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It's gorgeous and the world doesn't have enough of it.

	▲	wilkystyle an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I was gonna say, you can dislike it because of the design, but understand that that's a subjective opinion that has nothing to do with whether AI is awesome. I actually like these designs, personally.