Comment by xandrius 4 days ago
Interesting how many people in a hacker forum seem to be so pro-establishment and instead try to denigrate the goals of this initiative because of the chosen character. I guess that's how many earn their dollar after all?
Sure, if it had been today, Clippy would have been evil but that's the point, it wasn't back then. Why are we so accepting of the change?
> I learned to accept the fact that HN reached a critical mass point that made it fill up with people who market themselves as "product-oriented engineers", which is a way to say "I only build things when they lead to products".
This is a mentality I am working extremely hard to get rid of, and I blame HN for indoctrinating me this way.
That said, these days I don't view this place as filled with "product-oriented engineers", but it's become like any other internet forum where naysayers and criticism always rises to the top. You could solve world hunger and the top comment would be someone going "well, actually..."
It's not HN that killed the hackers, it's the Internet snark that put the final nail in the coffin.
I consider myself a hacker as I spend many evenings and weekends writing code for no commercial purpose but to create cool stuff and sometimes even useful stuff all in the open. I have no idea why I should be against using LLM. Just like I use an IDE and wouldn’t want to write code without one, sometimes an LLM can quickly write some drudgery that if I had to write completely myself would likely stop me from continuing. It’s just another tool in the toolbox, stop regarding it as some sort of evil that replaces us! It doesn’t and probably never will, we will always have more important things to do that will still require a human, even if that does not include a whole lot of coding .
> I have no idea why I should be against using LLM
It highly depends on your own perspective and goals, but one of the arguments I agree with is that habitually using it will effectively prevent you building any skill or insight into the code you've produced. That in turn leads to unintended consequences as implementation details become opaque and layers of abstraction build up. It's like hyper-accelerating tech-debt for an immediate result, if it's a simple project with no security requirements there would be little reason to not use the tool.
> instead try to denigrate the goals of this initiative because of the chosen character
Incorrect. Nobody is denigrating the goals of the initiative. All criticism I see is directed at the choice of the mascot only.
You know... people can love an initiative and criticize its mascot at the same time. The two are not incompatible.
> Clippy would have been evil but that's the point, it wasn't back then.
I was around when Clippy was introduced. It was universally hated. If anything, Clippy would be a good mascot for intrusive AI tools and services that harvest our data without regard for our privacy, not least because Clippy constantly monitored user actions just so that it could interrupt them.
If we want a mascot for tools that respect our data, it should definitely be something far less evil than Clippy.
> Incorrect. Nobody is denigrating the goals of the initiative. All criticism I see is directed at the choice of the mascot only.
The top comment, a thread you participated in, claims "The entire forced clippy movement is incredibly poorly thought out" after criticism of using clippy as a mascot.
Disagreement is not denigration. Like the sibling said, don't go so far in tge opposite side of the "you're either with us or against us" rhetoric that's been common for movements, the world is much more complex than that.
You can agree with the goals of an initiative and still think it is poorly thought out.
OP is acting as if anyone criticizing this thing must clearly be opposed to their entire world view, accusing them of being paid shills. No. Maybe they just (rightfully) don't like Clippy, and don't want a movement they care about to turn into that.
> All criticism I see is
* My criticism is
> Nobody is denigrating the goals of the initiative.
You're flooding this thread with your tangent about Clippy, which is diverting focus from the main issue regardless of your intentions.
> I was around when Clippy was introduced.
FWIW, so were many people on this forum and definitely the people behind this movement.
> Incorrect. Nobody is denigrating the goals of the initiative. All criticism I see is directed at the choice of the mascot only.
here is the comment posted before your comment that denigrates whole movement with it
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46090463
> I was around when Clippy was introduced. It was universally hated. If anything, Clippy would be a good mascot for intrusive AI tools and services that harvest our data without regard for our privacy, not least because Clippy constantly monitored user actions just so that it could interrupt them.
It would but funnily enough new MS mascot for that, Mico, perfectly encompasses the AI movement with being amorphous, soulless blob
Clippy was pretty universally hated back in it's day though. The way it just refused to let you do anything without it's help was annoying.
People complain about getting AI shoved down their throats. Clippy was worse in this regard. At least AI doesn't have a dancing animated character that eats up half your processing power with it's silly animations.
I was there too and Clippy was annoying because it popped up here and there but you definitely could do whatever you wanted without it.
To be fair, I kind of liked it. I must have been a target audience, as a kid learning windows it made the computer feel less threatening, dunno.
> I must have been a target audience, as a kid learning windows it made the computer feel less threatening
I don't think we, as kids, were the core audience for Clippy. I think Microsoft just wanted to make home users feel like their computer was some kind of friend, and not a cold machine.
But I agree, using Clippy as a kid was fun and I loved seeing all the animations.
I am still surprised to see people making any connections between HN to actual hacker culture. While this message board has great content and moderation, it is sponsored and operated by one of the largest VCs in silicone valley. This is not your underground garage BBS running on a borrowed landline. HN is about making it in the tech industry and making money for shareholders.
If anything I’m appalled precisely because I _do_ support the goals of the initiative! So I think you’ve got your thinking a little mixed up there.
> Sure, if it had been today, Clippy would have been evil but that's the point, it wasn't back then.
I think that's the exact opposite of the point. Back in the day, clippy was hated for being annoying and evil. In today's context, however, it looks positively benign.
This is a marketing initiative to push opinion on an important issue and people are criticizing the marketing.
You seem to think that people should approve of an advertisement if they approve of the product.
> hacker forum
You mean a forum run by a VC company and frequented mainly by startup bros? Or at least by people working for the "tech" companies responsible for this whole mess?
Between 2010-2016 (2019 at most)that sentiment was realistic. A nobody could have a good idea and a good execution and they can have a chance.
Now SV is all about grift. Everyone knows it. A nobody still has a chance, they just need to accept it needs to be a grift of some soft.
Realism, not idealism, is generally what makes good products and movements.
> Interesting how many people in a hacker forum seem to be so pro-establishment
Here's my perspective:
1) Coastal liberal inner city males with a tech flair and an interest in Apple, have decided that due to lack of social skills and/or inner circle it would be good to keep themselves busy with creating a business. Actually, business is a Republican term, let's call it a startup, - hold that rainbow flag for me will you -.
2) They start to realize, that startups operate in an environment with rules, their "business plan" eventually bumps into those rules. Those rules are what made their piece of land - commonly called a country - a nice place to live.
3) Meanwhile, various interests parade on "news" outlets telling the constituents that "rules bad for business, business made us great, everything else tried has failed".
4) Deregulation is the pill, libertarianism/freedom/liberty talk is the bacon wrapped around it
5) The city male realizes that he has more in common with the bigshot businessman that he thought, its only a few billions that set them apart
6) Furthermore, it has been accepted as an axiom that anyone can make it in US (immigrant went from poor being rich feelgood story on cnbc anyone?)
Business establishment is legitimate power in the US, also they are not being pro-establishment, they are being pro let-me-do-this-thats-the-only-thing-i-have-going-for-me
Also, let's ditch the terms good/evil. They are straight up juvenile.
>Interesting how many people in a hacker forum
I learned to accept the fact that HN reached a critical mass point that made it fill up with people who market themselves as "product-oriented engineers", which is a way to say "I only build things when they lead to products".
People commiting to the hacker ethos that consists of, among many other things, resistance to the established tools, embracing knowledge and code sharing, and exploration for its own sake are the minority.
The fact that there are many commenters who will claim that they finally build something they weren't able to build before and it's all thanks to LLM's is evidence that we already sacrificed the pursuit of personal competence, softly reframing it as "LLM competence", without caring about the implications.
Because obviously, every kid that dreamt of becoming a software engineer thought about orchestrating multiple agentic models that talk to each other and was excited about reviewing their output over and over again while editing markdown files.
The hackers are dead. Long live the hackers.