MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by zeroonetwothree | 2026-02-07 20:09:45+00:00
I wonder if this is just a matter of degree. In a few years (or less) you may not have to "skillfully guide" anything. The agents will just coordinate themselves and accomplish your goals after you give some vague instruction. Will you still feel proud? Or maybe a bit later then agents will come up with their own improvements and just ship them without any input at all. How about then?
by mycall | 2026-02-07 20:09:54+00:00
> Atari’s primary coin-op manufacturing and headquarters facility was located at 1265 Borregas Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94089 during the key 1976–1984 period. Another critical site in the immediate area was 1196 Borregas Avenue, used during the subsequent Tramiel era

I don't think these buildings exist anymore.
by somat | 2026-02-07 20:10:26+00:00
Articles like this always paint a rosy picture of the 3270 but consider the limitations. Async style updates as commonly found on a VT designed program were tricky.

Now admittedly my own experience with the 3270 was through about three layers of obtuse IBM operating systems. Perhaps if I sat down with a 3270 and a bare OS I would consider them differently, but I always found them terribly limiting compared to a VT. More efficient sure, but much harder/impossible to do cool stuff on.

source: I was a night shift tape monkey for a IBM place for a few years. A fair amount of down time, access to a full set of manuals and an understanding boss meant I was doing more hacking on production mainframes than I probably should have been.
by EvanAnderson | 2026-02-07 20:11:04+00:00
> Maybe it comes down to the definition of "toil".

For sure.

I idealize a future where people can spend more time doing things they want to do, whatever those avocations might be. Freedom from servitude. I guess some kind of Star Trek / The Culture hybrid dream.

The world we have is so far from that imaginary ideal. Implicit in that ideal would be elimination of inequality, and I'm certain there are massive forces that would oppose that elimination.
by xboxnolifes | 2026-02-07 20:11:19+00:00
> In the context of investing there is a correct price for financial assets that is given by trading everything back to dollars in the present.

This doesn't make sense though. The only reason I would buy an investment is if I believe it will grow in value from the point that I bought it. That means I'm pricing it at its future ccost.obviously other people are doing the same, so the actual cost of the investment will always rise above current value if people believe its a good investment.
by kryogen1c | 2026-02-07 20:11:28+00:00
The question is not "is it a bubble". Bubbles are a desirable feature of the American experiment. The question is "will this bubble lay the foundation for growth and destroy some value when it pops, or will it only destroy value"

https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/is-it-a-bubble
by bojan | 2026-02-07 20:11:34+00:00
I agree with you, and share the experience. Something changed recently for me as well, where I found the mode to actually get value from these things. I find it refreshing that I don't have to write boilerplate myself or think about the exact syntax of the framework I use. I get to think about the part that adds value.

I also have the same experience where we rejected a SAP offering with the idea to build the same thing in-house.

But... aside from the obvious fact that building a thing is easier than using and maintaining the thing, the question arose if we even need what SAP offered, or if we get agents to do it.

In your example, do you actually need that simple CRM or maybe you can get agents to do the thing without any other additional software?

I don't know what this means for our jobs. I do know that, if making software becomes so trivial for everyone, companies will have to find another way to differentiate and compete. And hopefully that's where knowledge workers come in again.
by scoofy | 2026-02-07 20:11:37+00:00
I mean, the thesis of the post is odd. I'll grant you that.

I work mostly with python (the vast majority is pure python), flask, and htmx, with a bit of vanilla js thrown in.

In a sense, I can understand the thesis. On the one hand Flask is a fantastic tool, with a reasonable abstraction given the high complexity. I wouldn't want to replace Flask. On the otherhand HTMX is a great tool, but often imperfect for what I'm exactly trying to do. Most people would say "well just just React!" except that I honestly loathe working with js, and unless someone is paying me, I'll do it in python. I could see working with an LLM to build a custom tool to make a version of HTMX that better interacts with Flask in the way I want it to.

In fact, in my project I'm working on now I'm building complex heatmap illustrations that require a ton of dataprocessing, so I've been building a model to reduce the NP hard aspects of that process. However, the illustrations are the point, and I've already had a back and forth with the LLM about porting the project into HTML, or some web based version of illustration at least, simply because I'd have much more control over the illustrations. Right now, matplotlib still suits me just fine, but if I had to port it, I could see just building my own tool instead of finding an existing framework and learning it.

Frameworks are mostly useful because of group knowledge. I learn Flask because I don't want to build all these tools from scratch, and because I makes me literate in a very common language. The author is suggesting that these barriers -- at least for your own code -- functionally don't exist anymore. Learning a new framework is about as labor intensive as learning one you're creating as you go. I think it's short-sighted, yes, but depending on the project, yea when it's trivial to build the tool you want, it's tempting to do that instead learning to use a similar tool that needs two adapters attached to it to work well on the job you're trying to do.

At the same time, this is about scope. Anyone throwing out React because they want to just "invent their own entire web framework" is just being an idiot.
by guerrilla | 2026-02-07 20:11:54+00:00
They are arbitrary. You don't want to bake these things into law. What if people start living to be 150 as of next week because of some miracle drug. It'd be retarded if people lost their license at 70. Don't do things wrong just because you can. This is why software is full of so many bugs. Do shit right the first time, so that we never have to think about this again. jfc
by dolebirchwood | 2026-02-07 20:11:56+00:00
There's a subset of people whose identity is grounded in the fact that they put in the hard work to learn things that most people are unable or unwilling to do. It's a badge of honor, and they resent anyone taking "shortcuts" to achieve their level of output. Kind of reminds me of lawyers who get bent out of shape when they lose a case to a pro se party. All those years of law school and studying for the bar exam, only to be bested by someone who got by with copying sample briefs and skimming Westlaw headnotes at a public library. :)
by zer00eyz | 2026-02-07 20:12:06+00:00
Dead wrong.

Because the world is still filled with problems that would once have been on the wrong side of the is it worth your time matrix ( https://xkcd.com/1205/ )

There are all sorts of things that I, personally, should have automated long ago that I threw at claud to do for me. What was the cost to me? Prompt and a code review.

Meanwhile, on larger tasks an LLM deeply integrated into my IDE has been a boon. Having an internal debate on how to solve a problem, try both, write a test, prove out what is going to be better. Pair program, function by function with your LLM, treat it like a jr dev who can type faster than you if you give it clear instructions. I think you will be shocked at how quickly you can massively scale up your productivity.
by stack_framer | 2026-02-07 20:12:08+00:00
> wait six months.

I mourn having to repeatedly hear this never-quite-true promise that an amazing future of perfect code from agentic whatevers will come to fruition, and it's still just six months away. "Oh yes, we know we said it was coming six, twelve, and eighteen months ago, but this time we pinky swear it's just six months away!"

I remember when I first got access to the internet. It was revolutionary. I wanted to be online all the time, playing games, chatting with friends, and discovering new things. It shaped my desire to study computer science and learn to develop software! I could see and experience the value of the internet immediately. It's utility was never "six months away," and I didn't have to be compelled to use it—I was eager to use it of my own volition as often as possible.

LLM coding doesn't feel revolutionary or exciting like this. It's a mandate from the top. It's my know-nothing boss telling me to "find ways to use AI so we can move faster." It's my boss's know-nothing boss conducting Culture Amp surveys about AI usage, but ignoring the feedback that 95% of Copilot's PR comments are useless noise: "The name of this unit test could be improved." It's waiting for code to be slopped onto my screen, so I can go over it with a fine-toothed comb and find all the bugs—and there are always bugs.

Here's what I hope is six months away: The death of AI hype.
Ask HN: How are you using specialized agents to accelerate your work?
by otterley | 2026-02-07 20:12:28+00:00
I'm curious how you all are going beyond AI-powered editors (Cursor, Claude Code, etc.) and vibe coding to meaningful accelerate your workflows and improve output quality using specialized agents.

There's a lot of talk about decomposing work into sub-agents with specific responsibilities, but not a lot of specifics (unless I'm looking in the wrong places). I'd love to hear concrete examples of how you are actually doing this in practice.

What specialized agents have you built and what's each one responsible for? (e.g., code review agent, test generation agent, integration validator, design critic)
How are you wiring them together? Are you using frameworks, custom scripts, or API orchestration?

What's your handoff strategy between agents? How do you ensure they work cohesively instead of creating inconsistencies?

How do you maintain quality and catch issues that might slip through? (testing, integration problems, design coherence, etc.)

What unexpected benefits or challenges have you encountered with your approaches?
by sosomoxie | 2026-02-07 20:12:36+00:00
I'm actually extremely good at programming. My point is I love computers and computing. You can use technology to achieve amazing things (even having fun). Now I can do much more of that than when I was limited to what I can personally code. In the end, it's what computers can do that's amazing, beautiful, terrifying... That thrill and to be on the bleeding edge is always what I was after.
by logicprog | 2026-02-07 20:12:56+00:00
That is an insane assumption to make based on the grandparents' post. What part of them talking about how much they care about the systems thinking and software architecture and usefulness and meaningfulness to other people of software over the day-to-day drudgery of APIs and bugs and typing in syntax indicates to you that they only care about money and status? They just care about a different part of the process.
by xaduha | 2026-02-07 20:13:07+00:00
True enough, but in my experience it's not really much of a problem because if I'm not doing Nix, then I'm doing containers which are widely available.

What can be a problem is muscle memory, when you expect it to autocomplete one way and it doesn't because something you want now shares first two or three letters with something else in your path. That's where FIGNORE comes in.
by dismalaf | 2026-02-07 20:13:09+00:00
Haxe is a great language but it feels like the ecosystem has been stagnant for 10 years. No Vulkan bindings, no SDL3, still trying to be a web language that happens to compile to native code instead of getting with the times and going fully native + maybe wasm. Part of me wants to write my own bindings to SDL3 in Haxe but it's far easier to just use Odin these days.
by satgate | 2026-02-07 20:13:19+00:00
The hype is real but the infrastructure isn't there yet. I've spent 25+ years in enterprise security and the pattern is familiar — new capability ships fast, governance catches up slow.

The actual hard problem with agents isn't intelligence, it's economic. When you give an agent access to APIs, who's tracking what it spends? Who enforces a budget? Right now most teams find out their agent burned through $10K in API calls after the invoice hits.

Agents are useful. But until we solve identity, authorization, and cost control for machine-to-machine traffic the same way we solved it for human traffic, it's going to be the Wild West.
by johngossman | 2026-02-07 20:13:48+00:00
I speculate that a lot of sci-fi reflects the cutting edge of science and technology at the time it is written. For well over a century a lot of that frontier was transportation: and we got "Around the World in 80 Days" and "20000 Leagues under the Sea" and then a lot of books about space. We also got "Canticle for Leibowitz" and other post-apocalyptic books out of the age when nuclear weapons and energy was top of mind. Then, in the 70s and 80s computer technology became the center of innovation and we got cyberpunk and a lot of sci-fi turned inward to virtual worlds and the like. Given we're in a new space age, maybe sci-fi will start to follow? I'm certainly seeing a new wave of AI centric fiction.
by duskwuff | 2026-02-07 20:13:50+00:00
I don't think anyone's failing to recognize modern sci-fi novels because they aren't called "The Space Martians Go To The Moon In Their Starship" or whatever.

Really, I think the most significant trend here is that, between 1950 and 1980 or so, the sci-fi genre grew up and stopped relying on painfully literal titles.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-02-07 20:14:02+00:00
I feel as if youtube itself might still contain some tracking.

People recommend invidious and piped but they are starting to have issues.

This video is archived on wayback machine (archive.org) and I feel as if that might be the best way to watch this video right now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260207024055/https://www.youtu...

Edit: I have also uploaded it on preservetube when I got interested in what are some wayback machine alternatives (given that wayback machine suggests to not upload videos given storage constraints unless absolutely necessary)

So I found preservetube which is sort of intended for this and uploaded this video on it

https://preservetube.com/watch?v=l4dCJJFuMsE
by anonnon | 2026-02-07 20:14:27+00:00
> I can't empathize with the complaint that we've "lost something" at all.

We could easily approach a state of affairs where most of what you see online is AI and almost every "person" you interact with is fake. It's hard to see how someone who supposedly remembers computing in the 80s, when the power of USENET and BBSs to facilitate long-distance, or even international, communication and foster personal relationships (often IRL) was enthralling, not thinking we've lost something.
by Melonai | 2026-02-07 20:14:29+00:00
I feel very similarly, I always thought of software engineering as being my future career. I'm young, I just really got my foot into the industry in my early twenties. It feels like the thing I wanted to do died right when I was allowed to start. I also always felt that if I didn't get to do development, I would try to get into arts which has always been a dream of mine, and now it feels that that died, too. I wish I was born just a little bit earlier, so that I had a bit more time. :(
by Folcon | 2026-02-07 20:14:32+00:00
I suspect my comment will not be well received, however I notice in myself that I've passed the event horizon of being a believer and am past the honeymoon period and I'm beginning to think about engineering

My headspace is now firmly in "great, I'm beginning to understand the properties and affordances of this new medium, how do I maximise my value from it", hopefully there's more than a few people who share this perspective, I'd love to talk with you about the challenges you experience, I know I have mine, maybe we have answers to each others problems :)

I assume that the current set of properties can change, however it seems like some things are going to be easier than others, for example multi modal reasoning still seems to be a challenge and I'm trying to work out if that's just hard to solve and will take a while or if we're not far from a good solution
by A_D_E_P_T | 2026-02-07 20:14:33+00:00
Any serious LLM user will tell you that there's no way to get from LLM to AGI.

These models are vast and, in many ways, clearly superhuman. But they can't venture outside their training data, not even if you hold their hand and guide them.

Try getting Suno to write a song in a new genre. Even if you tell it EXACTLY what you want, and provide it with clear examples, it won't be able to do it.

This is also why there have been zero-to-very-few new scientific discoveries made by LLM.
by cheema33 | 2026-02-07 20:14:48+00:00
> I am still waiting to see where it increases productivity...

If you are a software engineer, and you are not using using AI to help with software development, then you are missing out. Like many other technologies, using AI agents for software dev work takes time to learn and master. You are not likely to get good results if you try it half-heartedly as a skeptic.

And no, nobody can teach you these skills in a comment in an online forum. This requires trial and error on your part. If well known devs like Linus Torvalds are saying there is value here, and you are not seeing it, then then the issue is not with the tool.
by johnea | 2026-02-07 20:14:51+00:00
About a year ago there were a number of articles about how Alabama was greatly improving their public school math outcome with an elementary school teacher training program:

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/17/nx-s1-5328723/alabama-math-le...

Was this misinformation?

If not, I wonder why these results don't show in the nationwide aggregation?
by logicprog | 2026-02-07 20:14:53+00:00
I think unless you're vibe coding, it's pretty clear that they're still making it. Just because you aren't literally typing 100% of the characters that make up the syntax of the programming language you're using doesn't mean you're not making the final product in most meaningful sentences if you're designing the architecture, the algorithms, the data structures, the state machines, the interfaces, etc, and thinking about how they interact and whether they'll do something that's useful for the people you're making it for.
by linguae | 2026-02-07 20:14:55+00:00
Two years ago I decided to give up my career as an industry researcher to pursue a tenure-track professor position at a community college. One of the reasons I changed careers is because I felt frustrated with how research at my company changed from being more self-directed and driven by longer-term goals to being directed by upper management with demands for more immediate productization.

I feel generative AI is being imposed onto society. While it is a time-saving tool for many applications, I also think there are many domains where generative AI needs to be evaluated much more cautiously. However, there seems to be relentless pressure to “move fast and break things,” to adopt technology due to its initial labor-saving benefits without fully evaluating its drawbacks. That’s why I feel generative AI is an imposition.

I also resent the power and control that Big Tech has over society and politics, especially in America where I live. I remember when Google was about indexing the Web, and I first used Facebook when it was a social networking site for college students. These companies became successful because they provided useful services to people. Unfortunately, once these companies gained our trust and became immensely wealthy, they started exploiting their wealth and power. I will never forget how so many Big Tech leaders sat at Trump’s second inauguration, some of whom got better seats than Trump’s own wife and children. I highly resent OpenAI’s cornering of the raw wafer market and the subsequent exorbitant hikes in RAM and SSD prices.

Honestly, I have less of an issue with large language models themselves and more of an issue with how a tiny handful of powerful people get to dictate the terms and conditions of computing for society. I’m a kid who grew up during the personal computing revolution, when computation became available to the general public. I fell for the “computers for the rest of us,” “information at your fingertips” lines. I wanted to make a difference in the world through computing, which is why I pursued a research career and why I teach computer science.

I’ve also sat and watched research industry-wide becoming increasingly driven by short-term business goals rather than by long-term visions driven by the researchers themselves. I’ve seen how “publish-and-perish” became the norm in academia, and I also saw DOGE’s ruthless cuts in research funding. I’ve seen how Big Tech won the hearts and minds of people, only for it to leverage its newfound power and wealth to exploit the very people who made Big Tech powerful and wealthy.

The tech industry has changed, and not for the better. This is what I mourn.
by bytefish | 2026-02-07 20:14:58+00:00
To me, it’s super exciting to play ping pong with ideas up until I arrive at an architecture and interfaces, that I am fine with.

My whole life I have been reading other people’s code to accumulate best practices and improve myself. While a lot of developers start with reading documentation, I have always started with reading code.

And where I was previously using the GitHub Code Search to eat up as much example code as I could, I am now using LLMs to speed the whole process up. Enormously. I for one enjoy using it.

That said, I have been in the industry for more than 15 years. And all companies I have been at are full of data silos, tribal knowledge about processes and organically grown infrastructure, that requires careful changes to not break systems you didn’t even know about.

Actually most of my time isn’t put into software development at all. It’s about trying to know the users and colleagues I work with, understand their background and understand how my software supports them in their day to day job.

I think LLMs are very, very impressive, but they have a long way to go to reach empathy.
Show HN: Source code graphRAG for Java/Kotlin development based on jQAssistant
by artigent | 2026-02-07 20:16:00+00:00
Hey everyone,

I've built a source code graphRAG for Java/Kotlin project agentic analysis and development. It is built on top of jQAssistant with a detailed knowledge graphRAG in Neo4j.

You can check out the code here: https://github.com/2015xli/jqassistant-graph-rag

What it can do:

* "What's the main purpose of the com.example.auth package?"
* "Show me the call chain leading to the processPayment method."
* "What services use the UserRepository class?"

How it works:

1. Graph Creation: It uses jQAssistant and Java/Kotlin source file parsers to analyze your code's structure, dependencies, and relationships. It essentially builds graph overlays for a source code tree and build artifact tree.
2. GraphRAG Enrichment: It then enriches the graph and generates summaries from individual methods and classes all the way up to packages and the entire project. Embeddings are generated for the summaries to facilitate semantic query.
3. MCP server and Agent: It exposes the graphRAG capabilities through an MCP server and an example coding agent. You can use them to accomplish complex tasks.

Other design features:

* Modular design that can be easily adapted to new graphRAGs for other languages.
* Parallelized summarization process and summary cache management to save the cost in money and time.

The project is still a work in progress, but I'd love to get your feedback. Thanks for taking a look

Btw, I also built a source code graphRAG for C/C++ development at https://github.com/2015xli/clangd-graph-rag.