I really do not understand how software developer think anymore

> I have used LLMs to create stuff like word clones just for fun. It was a disaster. Sure, it had the basic functionality. But the moment you started with page structure (harder then one non-stop scrolling page), tables, images, rotating, and so many details that make up just the basics of word. Not even the extended functionality. You see every LLM just fall on its face. What do you think of https://scramblequest.app and https://wordpeek.app ? I have never looked at any of the code for them edit: Yeesh, misread your comment as "word games" not "word clones" and was very confused about the claim. Probably should have noted my confusion and re-read.

I think this is perfectly fine. If you explore Github, you're gonna see thousands of abandoned game engines, compilers for made-up languages. And that has been happening since before the LLM era. I used to be part of an OS messaging board in the early 2000s and almost everyone had their own OS. A dozen people or so could even run Firefox! I remember (now legend) Terry bothering us to check out LoseThos or GodOS or whatever was its name, but quite a few people had OSs that could do more than that. Not all software needs to be commercial to be useful, even if it's just for a learning experience. I have learned a lot from those experiments, even if they're not polished.

The more technical you get, the more subsitutable you become - or at least, people think of it in that way, because the whole idea is "It's not me, or the people, it's the raw technical prowess that earns its keep in this place". But it seems like we're finally starting to accept that "accidentals" like network effects, ownership, accountability, etc. are important. Of course, that's why many of us fled to technical corners in the first place - because the "accidentals" become tied up with things like nepotism, unfair and arbitrary judges from random humans who don't understand your merit, the need for bullshitting more than real technical value. Supposedly, anyways.

> I constantly see software being published on reddit that does X, Y, Z only for the authors to abandon it as fast as they vibe coded it. Also if you whip something up, you tend not to care for it as much as something you took the time to create in a "proper" manner.

It’s strange how you think AI is some static thing that only produces the type of output you experienced and isn’t constantly improving. My experience has proven the latter time and time again.

Also I think porting code to another language or rewriting is one of the easier tasks for an LLM, since it has an extremely detailed spec (the source code itself) and a ton of tests already (hopefully).

> Using a LLM to translate a project in a short time, is by itself incredible. Not really. Transpilers have existed since forever. The hard part is all the edge cases. (And LLMs don't solve this problem; they probably akshually exacerbate it.)

I'd like more people to be writing about this, because I find it fascinating. I have my own private project that is heavily LLM-coded, just to learn about what it's like. It's amazing how everything is different yet everything is the same. Big complicated features can start working quickly and give a massive endorphin boost, but then fixing them up and integrating them in properly and polishing the UI? It all feels even more painful having experienced the heady thrill of the initial implementation. And things get to a point where you can feel the inertia set in, the point where things have gotten so hacked up that the LLM can't make any progress without creating an even bigger mess. It's the point where you have to go back and fix up the architecture, or scrap the whole thing and restart with a better plan, or a bit of both (rewind to the "last sane point"). It's like developing with a j…