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points by jjuel 2 days ago | 0 comments

Things like this used to be a lot cooler before LLMs. It used to show someone actually spent time and worked hard on something mostly pointless. Now you can just point an LLM to it, and be done. Projects like this have lost their magic.

[–] kraig911 2 days ago

So proof of work adds value to you. I'd say don't dismiss an idea just because an LLM helped do it. The idea is all that matters anymore.

[–] foltik 2 days ago

Think about how you'd feel about receiving:

- An interesting sweater

- A sweater from a friend who thought you'd like it

- A handmade sweater from your grandma

- A worn-out sweater that belonged to one of your favorite artists

Little of what you’d feel comes from the sweater itself, or how much effort it took to make it.

The value largely comes from the person behind it. What it says about them, how they connect to you or the wider culture.

These kinds of projects used to be that same kind of window into another like minded hacker’s thoughts, personality, taste, and sense of humor.

That sort of thing is still out there, just getting drowned out by these low effort AI generated attention grabs, which really don’t say much of anything besides “here’s a statistically average rendition of a random thought that passed through my head.”

[–] kinduff 2 days ago

This is my reasoning about trusting authors rather than judge the tools they used.

[–] foltik 2 days ago

Agreed, and I don't care what tools someone uses. But if all they have to show is an AI generated README and pile of slop code with no sign of any human choices or curation, "don't judge the tools" doesn’t really apply.

It’s not “using a tool” when you farm out 99.999% of decisions to coin flips besides a random initial seed set by a few sentence prompt.

It’s like asking some guy “make me a project that does X” and then claiming you curated it and the other guy was just a tool.

[–] gordic_sara 2 days ago

hey sooo, not sure if it matters, but I went to art school and have been a designer for 8+ years; so definitely made a lot of human choices here. hope that helps lol!

[–] foltik 2 days ago

It does and I appreciate that. Really don’t mean to discourage your creativity, just explaining why it didn’t sit right with me.

The main thing is the presentation. Unrepresentative AI generated image at the top, AI generated readme, AI prose in every file I opened. It’s hard to tell which decisions were actually yours.

It’s the same sort of feel to me as a novel with an interesting original plot, but written in generic AI prose.

I want to hear your voice, not the AI’s.

[–] q4y2u35uk 2 days ago

I don't doubt there's a human touch, but the point is art school and being a designer are orthogonal to what would have made this project impressive in the past. This project interfaces with deep and partially undocumented macOS internals. A few years ago this project would have been a pet project of a master systems programmer.

I don't think that making software should be gatekept. I suppose it's a bit melancholy that software has to be appreciated differently now.

[–] kinduff 2 days ago

Love what you did. Keep creating with the tools you have. Just like you did in art school. Don't get demotivated nor try to justify in today's mood.

[–] kinduff 2 days ago

That last line rings a bell in how corp works sometimes.

[–] brookst 2 days ago

Honest question: do you think art’s value is proportional to the time it took to create it? Like a painting that took hundreds of hours is necessarily better art than a minimalist work that might have taken a few hours, or less?

[–] dumberquestions 2 days ago

Not op but I don't think it's proportional, it's more like an extra layer of value on top of the creation's innate value.

[–] foltik 1 day ago

No, I think the value is in how much of and how well the human experience is compressed into the work (and how well it decompresses in the mind of the beholder).

[–] jdironman 2 days ago

So...sentiment and bias?

[–] AlexeyBelov 1 day ago

Yes? Not all bias is bad.

[–] jjuel 2 days ago

To me yes. The work is the fun part. I became a dev because I enjoyed the coding and the work. If all you care about is an end result then that is fine. It is just my opinion that projects like this had more magic to them before LLMs. LLMs are making things soulless.

[–] fasterik 2 days ago

I think both are true to a certain extent. We admire the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel both for the idea and for the execution. If we learned that Michelangelo had hired an anonymous artist to do the physical act of painting according to his precise instructions, it might detract from some of the credit we give him, but it wouldn't detract from its beauty or value as a work of art.

[–] noduerme 2 days ago

Why don't we credit the ceiling to the Pope, then? It was his idea to hire a guy to paint it.

I think the question is: What level of detail would Michelaelangelo have needed to give the anonymous painter, in this story, for us to still give the creative credit to Michelangelo? If he micro-managed every brushstroke and color, then clearly it was his vision. What if he just said, I want this finger reaching out here and that finger there? Or just, hey paint Adam and throw in God, make it fit this ceiling, maybe tone down that blue a little?

When we say who "made" a movie, outside the movie business, it's usually the director we're talking about, not the producers. They had input, sure, but they didn't control every individual choice.

To keep the sweater analogy rolling, proof of effort is a real thing when you get a gift for someone. If you tell your secretary go buy a sweater for my wife, that's a lot less meaningful than if you go out shopping for it yourself, right?

[–] ggsp 2 days ago

Maybe we credit the people without whom we believe a thing could not have been made?

Presumably, another pope could’ve commissioned the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling just as well as Julius II did, but we assume not many artists of the time could have done what Michelangelo did. So we laud and aggrandize those without whom we believe something could not have happened, especially when, like in his case, they did nearly all the work with their own hands.

Directing a movie is—except in very rare cases—the art of delegation in service of a core vision. And we believe only Stanley Kubrick could (or would) have maniacally orchestrated a space odyssey with effects that still hold up half a century later. Or what have you, I’m not a film buff by any means.

[–] noduerme 9 hours ago

I think you're sort of agreeing with me? Proof of effort is kind of a meme right now, generally to mock the idea that delegating is fundamentally any less creative than hands-on work. That's not a new idea ...producers refer to "their" TV shows. Bassists say "my band" (and I say "my bassist", which I've actually gotten shit for once or twice).

There aren't many examples in the modern world of a piece of work as large and magnificent as the Sistine Chapel which was done by one guy. A movie or a AAA game requires hundreds of people, and arguably the results would be noticeably different if any one of a few dozen of them were replaced by someone else. Changing screenwriters could be as big a change as directors, so in that sense without the delegation of the producers, the thing couldn't or wouldn't have been made as it is.

But the more you micromanage the design decisions of a thing, the more you're the person without whom it couldn't be done, right? I've been on enough commercial sets to see directors juggling every decision and detail with the crew; the crew is their toolbox, or their brushes, the actors are their palette. I think if someone uses an AI like that, it's at least them without whom it couldn't be done. Perhaps "proof of effort" is just a not-nice way to express who had creative control. Once you delegate the design decisions themselves, you enter a category where you're not really essential.

[–] drfloyd51 2 days ago

There is something nice about knowing a person felt passionate enough about a thing to accomplish it despite the ratio of effort to usefulness(?). You know… all of art.

It’s a human connection. Most of us have spent time working on something we appreciate that others don’t value. We recognize and appreciate that. Digging into and noticing the details gives us an appreciation for the effort of the creator. Did they add a delightfully unexpected bit of polish?

People appreciate “wasted” effort.

I don’t care that an AI did a good job. Maybe the first time it was impressive. The Nth time? Meh. And ideas are the easy part. We could have 1,000 “look! I made my windows look like ham” apps and no one would care. But 1 hand crafted really good “look I put a disco ball in the desktop, see how it lights up the windows from behind!” App Would be amazing.

[–] throw399ei39 2 days ago

I appreciate results.

The story of how a person got there is nice, but without results it's useless to me.

[–] AlexeyBelov 1 day ago

> I

> to me

> created: 1 day ago

> karma: -1

[–] Hammershaft 2 days ago

I'm not a labor theory of value guy, but knowing someone worked hard on something did add a certain charm to these projects.

[–] eatsyourtacos 2 days ago

>The idea is all that matters anymore

Which is why joy is gone for most. Maybe you don't care about the process, but most people do.

Doing the hard work and seeing the result really meant something. Seeing the result from the click of a few keystrokes is so meaningless.

[–] zackmorris 1 day ago

I'm glad that you articulated that. Tech has been saying that ideas don't matter anymore for so long that it's become a cult of anhedonia.

[–] partyficial 2 days ago

blood diamonds

[–] assumed_throwaw 2 days ago

Yes, that's how I feel, too. This is "cool," but LLM made such projects unremarkable.

Back then, you could appreciate the work someone put into silly-but-fun project like that, we could read about the developer's story and the code could be interesting to look at.

Nowadays, it's great that LLMs let people express their creativity, but it doesn't pique my curiosity the way it used to. As a result, I don't see the point of sharing them on HN, but apparently many people disagree.

[–] guy4261 2 days ago

I’ve been using LLMs for a while now and this particular idea hasn’t occurred to me. So yes - I still do appreciate the creativity.

[–] orangecat 1 day ago

“The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't.” - Douglas Adams

[–] dvt 2 days ago

I don't want to be presumptuous, but people that say this have rarely really ever built anything mostly pointless. But maybe you can prove me wrong and point me to your github.

Building pointless things is often about prototyping some idea, seeing if something can be done, or just messing around. It's never been about wrestling with OS APIs or grokking out-of-date docs. LLMs handle all this stupid boring stuff so you can do something cool that you think is cool.

[–] exadeci 2 days ago

The creator is a product designer not a software engineer so before LLM she would have had the idea and never created it

[–] seizethecheese 2 days ago

Beyond what others have said about creativity, projects still take work to iron out. LLMs can speed up work 10x but they can’t validate very well.

[–] bigyabai 2 days ago

I dunno, xsnow was just as boring in 2006 as it is in 2026. Pointless apps are made and forgotten all the time, I don't think it's a bad thing.

[–] hobo123 2 days ago

xsnow was beautiful, but it always sent the fan spinning. :/

[–] j16sdiz 2 days ago

Making this good still takes some effort. One can still tinker it like a little art project.

[–] stevenhubertron 1 day ago

I disagree. I like that weird and quirky can exist again since the "cost" is so low compared to "just use shadcn on tailwinds" so everything can look the same. LLMs can make slop for sure, but this is fun and more of what the internet needs no matter if its a LLM or a human behind the code.

[–] steve_adams_86 2 days ago

I totally disagree. I respect efforts made without LLMs, but if a person is enabled by one to express their creative ideas like this, that's awesome too.

[–] dist-epoch 2 days ago

So why does this post have 200 upvotes then?