Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- "After trying Kagi/Duck Duck Go, I have gone back to Google for search and I freely grant that I find the “AI Overview” to be useful."
I feel compelled to point out that Kagi does offer AI-backed answers if you want it to. Just pose your query with a question mark to trigger the AI response in addition to the usual search results. It is not ever the default or only answer, and I pray Kagi keeps it that way!
I use the AI option more often than I thought I would, usually for things that I don't consider controversial or complicated.
by vertnerd - There are various approaches toward AI. Some are radical. I often found extremism to be wrong in most cases.
I have a suspicion that people who reject AI related stuff is just scared under the hood. They fight against AI because of the fear against loosing job, money, or control.
There were many manual jobs. Lets say carpenters. They had manually created things, often pieces of art. Now many things are soulless, created by factory output, and by robots. It is true that we lost some artistry. It is true that every line of code will not be a work of art. There is no going back though. Adapt.
by renegat0x0 - > ... people who reject AI related stuff is just scared under the hood. They fight against AI because of the fear ...
Oh yes, buddy, those stupid people should better act out of love, not fear, right?
> There is no going back though. Adapt.
“He who would live must fight, and he who does not want to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has no right to exist.”
- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925.
by wartywhoa23 - Emotional rejection of AI will lead to the same outcome as emotional rejection of cars, the printing press and computers.
Additionally, when it comes to the software field, it will be a sure way of selecting yourself out of the work pool.
by glimshe - > it will be sure way of selecting yourself out of the work pool
i'm ok with that
by lirolero - Plenty of people live successfully without a car in 2026.by kg
- The whole "it's like the printing press, cars, computers, etc etc" is a weak, blunt comparison. Not only are all those things, AI included, very different from each other, but even accepting the premise, critics of technology often had/have reasonable arguments.
It's a disappointingly un-thoughtful quip to see on HN so commonly. It's the kind of thing I would mostly expect to hear from non-technical people out in public spaces.
- > it will be sure way of selecting yourself out of the work pool
If, as an engineer, you rely completely on AI then you will be selected out of the work pool. Some engineers will still be needed. If I was interviewing them (I used to do a lot of this) then I will want the ones who understand the code. If they only use AI then it will quickly become clear that they don't understand it. Why would I hire them when another person can understand it?
- Count me in. I rejected my promotion (losing 2x gain in salary) from sysadmin to developer at my work exactly because of AI that ate it alive during the last year.
Our devs have been outright complaining about getting dumb, losing touch with the codebase and getting lost in weekly switching between models/agents that have been gushing as if from a firehose, but the management (read investors) knows better and there's a culture of self-censoring the opposition to AI among employees.
by wartywhoa23 - I'm not sure how valuable this advice is. From what I can see, Jeffries hasn't been involved in actual software development for decades (he is ~87 and has a lot of great accomplishments under his belt, but in the year 2026, 0% of his income relies upon him generating solutions for paying clients in a competitive space, and probably hasn't for a long, long time).
For some reason HN readers love this sort of content, largely by periphery players who mostly think it gives them an angle for clicks. And, I mean, as someone who uses lots of AI to delight clients and stay competitive, you be you. It leaves more for me.
by llm_nerd - > From what I can see, Jeffries hasn't been involved in actual software development for decades (he is ~87 and has a lot of great accomplishments under his belt, but in the year 2026, 0% of his income relies upon him generating solutions for paying clients in a competitive space, and probably hasn't for a long, long time).
I had to google him to even figure out why he's relevant (his About Me on the linked site is literally "I’m Ron Jeffries, the same old one. This is my new site. It’s where all my new articles will go" very helpful smh.) Xtreme Programming? When was that last relevant, 20 years ago?
by ChickeNES - I must again point out that we're not even certain yet that we're "losing" any programming capability, and we're not certain the tradeoff isn't worth it.
All of these arguments presuppose we're losing something that's not worth losing.
I want someone to start one square earlier and argue to me why that matters. I've read enough of these "your skills are atrophying!" arguments; I'm also making like 10x as much revenue as I did through a business that delights my clients. Why should I care about my "skills" if I'm still able to make money, pursue hobbies, and enjoy life?
I just don't think it's that serious.
- For some of us, "enjoy life" necessitates having some care and craftsmanship in the work we're doing 40 hours per week. People liked this job. Now it's becoming just a job.
Imagine a Michelin chef who previously invented delicious menus but whose boss has declared he now can only serve microwaved Sysco food. The revenue for some reason hasn't decreased. Why should he care about his "skills" if he's still able to make money, pursue hobbies, and enjoy life? I think that should be obvious here.
by eudamoniac - I think there's a key difference of perspective hidden in your response. You're a business owner; you sell outcomes to your customers. Even if we suppose that skill atrophy is real, it's easy to see how that tradeoff would be worth it to you, and not to someone who is an individual contributor in a corporate environment. For an IC in a corporate environment, the accumulation of portable skills is an important part of what makes the job worthwhile.
For what it's worth: I went freelance right around the time that agents were starting to become extremely capable, and I've never enjoyed my work more. I'd believe the claim that my hands-on coding skills are atrophying to some degree, but I'm also developing other skills that have much higher leverage in my new setting.
- Bad blog.
> I do not come to you with clean hands. > I am not here to dictate morality
These two things contradict eachother.
> My primary focus here will be software development > Environmental Harm > Stanley Tucci
These three things also contradict eachother.
> If we lived in a post-scarcity
Maybe this is your real problem, and you're just confusing cause and effect.
> We need to resist “AI” so that thousands, perhaps millions of people do not die
Hyperbole.
> Look up the “Eliza effect”. Even the weakest conceivable program like this was seductive. These new ones are masters of seduction.
Sounds like software development alright.
This person has a familiar name, I'm sure he is amazing at something. This blog is not the peak of his work.
EDIT:
> I quote “AI” to emphasize that these things are not intelligent.
by vouwfietsman - > Bad blog.
The Anti's have been cranking up their submissions of this junk lately.
by ChickeNES - I don't think the take is bad, and what he says is right. Maybe we shall look at the substance rather than the artistic properties of their words?
I was recently discussing with someone who wanted to put all datacenters into AI datacenter basket, and inadvertently labeled all consolidated computing bad. That person, claiming otherwise was not knowing what they were talking about,
But while having nuances, AI datacenters and heavy AI usage is harmful to the world we live in, as a whole. We should come into terms with this and go from there.
by bayindirh - I've never understood the water argument... yes, it takes a lot of water in the initial setup to fill the water cooling loops, but isn't not constantly burning water, right? it gets cooled off again and goes around the loopby voidUpdate
- I think it's just the most evocative of the plethora of environmental argumentsby alansaber
- It's about evaporative cooling. Read about how cooling towers work in nuclear and coal plants. The principle is the same for the data centers, but it the wasteheat to get rid of comes from computation.
They obviously shouldn't be doing it like that, but since clean water is cheap and business in absence of reason optimizes for lowest costs that's exactly what they did.
by scotty79 - In some cases it does. Most of the DCs use open evaporators still. Keeps the costs down.by alcomatt
- It’s not a good argument in my opinion, just something that’s spread because it’s easy to latch onto. The actual numbers on water usage aren’t a big deal.
That’s not to say that AI is all fine and dandy, I genuinely think frontier AI companies have deranged leadership.
by N_Lens - Why? AI is enriching my life and letting me focus on solving hard problems. I don't believe in the sentience crap and am just using it at face value for what it is, a useful productivity tool. Every software developer's main purpose is to automate and reduce the amount of boring manual labour required. By this logic, should people in the past have "resisted the software development department"?by borzi
- Pragmatist meets moralistby alansaber
- The important question is: Will my work competitor also resist AI? We have no way to organize this, and hence, as they say, "resistance is futile".by unified101
- History has a lot to say about the ruling class benefitting from (and ensuring?) the working class cannot organize, because that is exactly when the workers have leverage.
workers that feel powerless and dont try to resist is great news for rulers who only serve to generate revenue.
by rDr4g0n - What I would love to see is a side by side comparison of two companies (one using AI, and one without) over an extended period of time.
Id wager that they would fare the same. The time saved on some tasks are outweighed by extra time spent on others. Everyone assumes that just because you can pump out more features, you're more successful.
- It probably depends on how you are positioned on the market, but my employer has yet to see competitive pressure from not using AI.by layer8
- The point is, you will be better than your competitor if you resist it.by lnkl
- Why are we glossing over the fact that it's all trained on stolen code, stolen art, stolen books? It's unethical to use it, it's unethical to take money for it. It should be either free or killed. I really don't understand why we just collectively accepted that.by czpl