It _does_ look really cool, genuinely, but calling it a "labour of love" and then having AI write the readme/docs seems conflicting.

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in_absentia an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Long-form comments in the code are AI-written too, so I assume the whole thing is vibecoded. I guess my question is why. This is obviously not a piece of software anyone will ever use. If the author didn't do this for themselves - to learn, to show off their skills - then why bring it to life?

In business, there's this saying that "when a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric". I guess LLMs also make that true for hobby projects that used to make up a good portion of HN. We'd celebrate a project like that not because it's useful, but because it's a triumph of human ingenuity and a celebration of a personal achievement for the author. But now, it isn't, so is it still something we ought to celebrate?

	▲	derac 8 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		AI assisted or not, you have no idea how much of his personal effort went into the project.
	▲	dainiusse 3 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		For the fun of it. Why not. And otoh, isn't it impressive that llm's can do it.
	▲	gizajob 9 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		>Why bring it to life? Why not? The author wanted it, and had wanted it for about four decades since trying and failing as a child due to the difficulty of the task. If you’re in a certain frame of mind, then “why bring it to life?” can be directed at any kind of cultural work to negate it out of existence.
	▲	shevy-java 14 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> why bring it to life? I think all AI projects should die, but if your question is aimed as to "why to publish it on github", then why not? Others could look at the code and learn from it (perhaps); and it is easier to distribute it that way too, in many cases. So I don't fully agree with the assumption that it would be automatically useless. Personally I won't use AI slop projects. It already annoys me to no ends that AI skynet successfully took over ruby development. I don't feel like even giving any feedback, as a few ruby devs such as Hiroshi Shibata, only interact with other beings via AI slop spam via claude; suddenly newly gained "perfect english language skills". It is all so fake now when AI infiltrates projects.

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

I'm at the point as soon as I think "was this written with AI help?" is in doubt I immediately hit the back button.

Have been for a while, it's exhausting.

> The clock you can trust

*Bleh*

	▲	gizajob 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		No, I think it’s cool AF. Is it work that needed to be done? Certainly not. Is it work that could have been done by humans? Yeah maybe with a year or two of free time. AI gives us these admittedly pretty useless capabilities but it’s still fun to do, to get a new advanced tool to make us a kind of hauntological version of something that could have existed. You sound like the fun police and someone who should stick to programming in raw, unadulterated machine code rather than using any kind of assistance.

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tahoemph999 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thinking of and expressing the functionality of the thing might be the labor of love for this person. Their definition of labor doesn't have to be yours.

	▲	tarkin2 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Their labour didn’t involve coding. When we equate labour to creating a load of prompts then it feels hollow to me. Was this, then, done to impress others rather than enrich the coders skills and experience? The futuristic equivalent of pressing the “demo” button on old electronic keyboard and pretending to play

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

Why do you say it's written by AI?

	▲	flohofwoe 39 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not the parent, but it reads a lot like written by AI. It has that typical breathless style that's exhausting just from reading. Also, looking at the code, the whole project looks vibe coded, no human would write such comments. Everything in a single git commit also looks "suspicious". It's cool that LLMs can write Z80 asm now, but yeah "labour of love"... tsk tsk tsk...
	▲	jameshart 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Claude’s written voice is so distinctive, anyone who has spent time working with Claude instantly recognizes it. Which, if you think about it too hard, says something slightly profound and a little disturbing about identity…

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api an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder: was there a time when using a compiler was considered cheating? "Real men" code everything in ASM!

I do recall a whole era when using a GUI was considered cheating and denigrated as a "point and drool" interface (a play on "point and click").

Is using a combine cheating in farming? Is a nail gun or using prefab wall sections cheating in home construction? Is a 3D printer cheating in fabrication? If someone prints something with a 3D printer, do we say "you didn't make that, the printer did!"

I find it weird for people who like technology to be so averse to tools that automate labor since that is literally what all technology is, and a tool to automate intellectual labor is literally what a computer is. A machine is a thing whose purpose is to provide leverage to amplify human effort and more rapidly realize human intent in some domain.

Maybe it comes from a category error. AI is kind of a hand-wavey term, since most people think it means the thing is sentient. It's not. It has zero intent, zero motivation, zero ability to choose anything not already in its training data, and it will go precisely where its context window (and training data) guide it. It's a tool, a machine, and like any other machine it is set in motion by the user and guided by the user. The "choices" it makes are latent in its data or structure, or implied by its prompt. (Yes sometimes they can be surprising, but that's true of all complex machines.)

Actual sentient AI does not exist. It might someday but it does not today. I suspect it requires a very different kind of system with continuous learning, dynamical state, and feedback, and a goal function tied somehow to thermodynamics in the real physical world the way ours is, but that's pure hypothesis on my part. We don't even have rigorous definitions for such things.

	▲	flohofwoe 37 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		For me the red line is obviously AI generated readmes. If the author can't even be arsed to write obviously human facing text by himself I immediately lose all interest too.
	▲	robin_reala an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The critical difference I think is deterministic vs non-deterministic. A compiler isn’t the correct comparison, it’s reading out your desired specs to a team member who does the actual engineering work.
	▲	dosisking 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Your analogies are completely non-sensical.
	▲	gizajob 10 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I just derived this exact line of thought from a different comment above so I’ve no idea why you’re getting downvoted for it.