I listened to a conversation between two superstar developers in their 50's, who have been coding for more than most readers here have been alive, about their experience with Claude Code.
I wanted to tear my ears out.
What is crystal clear to me now is using LLMs to develop is a learned and practiced skill. If you expect to just drop in and be productive on day one, forget it. The smartest guy I know _who has a PhD in AI_, is hopeless at using it.
Practice practice practice. It's a tool, it takes practice. Learn on hobby projects before using it at work.
The problem is that it’s being marketed like it’s magic and will make people obsolete… not as a tool with a high learning curve.
I don’t blame people for being upset when it can’t do what all the hype says it will do.
The way people talk about the latest Claude Code is the same way people were talking 2-3 years ago about whatever the latest model was then. Every release gets marketed as if it’s a new level of magic, yet we’re still here having the same debates about merit, because reality doesn’t match the marketing and hype.
It has gotten better, I tried something with early ChatGPT that failed horribly (a basic snake game written in C), and just tried the exact same thing again last week and it worked—it wasn’t good, but it technically worked. But if it took 3 years to get good enough to pass my basic test, why was I being fed those lies 3 years ago? The AI companies are like the boy who cried wolf. At this point, it’s on them to prove they can do what they say, not up to me to put in extraordinary efforts to try and get value out of their product.
Last week I sat through a talk from one of our SVPs who said development is cheap and easy now, then he went on about the buy vs build debate for 20 minutes. It’s like he read a couple articles and drank the kool-aid. I also saw someone talking about ephemeral programs… seeing a future where if you want to listen to some MP3s, you’ll just type in a prompt to generate a bespoke music player. This would require AI to reliably one-shot apps like Winamp or iTunes in a few words from a layperson with no programming background. These are the ideas the hype machine is putting in people’s minds that seem detached from reality.
I don’t think the, “you’re holding it wrong”, type responses are a good defense. It’s more that it’s being marketed wrong, because all these companies need to maintain the hype to keep raising money. When people use the AI the way the hype tells them it should work… it doesn’t work.
I gave it a basic one or two sentences prompt for the snake game, the code it generated wouldn’t compile 3 years ago. It was also unable to fix the errors. A similar prompt last week worked. It wasn’t a “good” version of the game, but it compiled and functioned.
The process being described by many in the comments removes all the magic. It sounds laborious and process heavy. It removes the part of the job I like, while loading the job with more work I don’t enjoy. This feels like the opposite of what we should want AI to do.
"The Outlaw Sea" is a book about the long history of the complexity of responsibility, ownership, in international shipping and the ships themselves. It's very good, it should be on the HN standard reading list, much like _The Box_.
I'm only interested in comments here from people who have an understanding of the complex world of outsourcing responsibility.
TL;DR: International cooperation isn't at a level where ANY country/bloc can have an impact on how their own waste is disposed of. The idea that magically that will happen with clothing is an admission of ignorance of this fact in decades old industries.
We need more and stronger international laws. The opposite of the current US administration's influence.
I had to 'contact sales' to request an enterprise license to cover the period where we transition away from mattermost.
Great product, but trust is everything when it comes to such a core part of a company. They fucked up, real bad.
I'll use this while we transition away, unless there is a community fork which is sustainable and is firewalled from the morons at mattermost org who fouled this all up
"You are licensed to use compiled versions of the Mattermost platform produced by Mattermost, Inc. under an MIT LICENSE[...]You may be licensed to use source code to create compiled versions not produced by Mattermost, Inc. in one of two ways[...]1. Under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU AGPL v3.0, subject to the exceptions outlined in this policy"
This means that you can totally fork and patch any restrictions out of the publicly available source code, and there's not a bloody thing they can do to stop it.
Also, from a legal standpoint the "subject to the exceptions" part is bogus, because it is AGPL -- no exceptions can be made to that license, else it would not be copyleft anymore.
I've been Linux only for around 15 years personally, but I don't push it on others.
A few weeks ago I told the company our few Windows machines are going to be sunset-ted. No push back (other than a request to have one for the odd thing - but will do that in a VM. Even the devs who have always been on Windows are up for it.
At home my kids use computers for playing and making games. Windows was the path of least resistance. I realized it'll make essentially no difference to them to switch to Linux. And boy do kids adapt quickly.
So thanks MS, sincerely. I've never both worked and lived completely Windows free, but your encouragement to drop Windows has made me realize how painless it is, and I should have done it years ago.
Edit: One guy is on mac. And always will be. No issue there IMHO
What about people who need to use creative tools? There is Blender and Davinci Resolve, which are great. But GIMP is just not a match for Affinity. And what about apps like Ableton?
I wish I could make the full switch, but it's just not possible at the moment.
Network effects says that is long-term immaterial; there just needs to be some event that breaks a self-reinforcing cycle.
The reason there is no linux version of Affinity is thus simple: Because there aren't enough linux users to warrant spending the relatively tiny cost it takes to do that. It won't cost much and it won't significantly change Affinity as a product to have a linux release. They just don't bother; not enough paying users.
And why aren't there enough linux users? Because Affinity, for one, doesn't run on it.
That is the self reinforcing cycle that so far kept Windows around as default choice.
But that cycle can be broken. If not through a sudden burst based on some serious hype, then perhaps simply with slow and steady change.
Or through emulation, but then the incentive is more to make the software work well in the emulator, rather than natively.
Then again, maybe we just need to wait longer for the market to catch up. Not many Steam games support Linux natively yet, even though Linux is a close second to Windows for how many games run on it through Proton. I guess developers figure that they don't need to do extra work when Valve will do it for them, but maybe that will change after a portion of the market has migrated to Linux, especially if Valve slows down on the compatibility work.
On the other hand, I migrated from macOS, and chose to stick to Gimp. Its interface is the worst I’ve seen, but with PhotoGIMP it’s tolerable. Now, when I’m used to it, I don’t care about Affinity or Photoshop to ever come to Linux. I want Gimp to consider rewriting their interface. And maybe to change this idiotic name nobody in the real world thinks is funny. Then it would be quite good product to promote.
Also, I use Pinta for simple tasks. And Krita for something bigger (or more drawing), but I wish it to be Wayland-ready.
The fact a piece of software is not considered exactly as good as another one doesn't need the work cannot be done.
What is important is the outcome, not the tool. We were editing pictures at the beginning of the century on Photoshop 6 or something when it was not nearly as good as 2025's Gimp or Affinity of 5 years ago.
> And what about apps like Ableton?
Bitwig, Reaper and Waveform are available on Linux as well as Ardour, Renoise, Mixbus, Zrythm and a few others. Ableton is ome of the most popular DAW with Logic but there is not a situation in the music industry where a particular tool/format/protocol forces a monoculture.
It's not just the features, but also the UX itself.
GIMP feels clunky and the UI is not as good. I haven't tried out the Photoshop mod. Apparently it matches all the keyboard shortcuts.
Many who tried to switch are complaining about how unintuitive it is. I know you can just try to get used to the different workflows, but unless the UX issues are addressed you won't see professionals making the switch.
Blender managed to completely overhaul their UI and it's now being used to create Oscar winning animated feature films.
I used Photoshop in the past and I think the UX complains are overly exaggerated and mostly come down to resistance to change. Most of the complains come from people who never used Gimp or only tried it for a couple of tried minutes. These people have lost every right to complain about windows really.
Because the same thing happens to me when I am asked to do anything in Microsoft Excel. I am using MS Office so infrequently that it is super unintuitive for me. It takes me less time to convert the file and edit it in libreoffice then convert it back to xlsx than using Excel.
I've been using Adobe design products on a daily basis for around 25 years. GIMP is simply not capable of what Photoshop is. Not even close. You cannot accomplish the same thing on it. As of right now, an alternative on Linux doesn't exist. I've certainly tried to find one because it's one of the major things stopping me from permanently switching.
As for the Ableton comment, I've been a user of Ableton Suite for around 15 years. Bitwig is catching up fast (no surprise - it was started by ex-Ableton developers who were frustrated with Ableton's slow progress), but there's a major problem in that most plugins and many audio interfaces are not compatible.
Productivity can also matter: if one tool allows you to get outcome X in 2 hours, but with another it takes 6 hours (or 20 vs 60 minutes), that can also be important.
When taking into account productivity, you have to take into account the loss of productivity of using Windows. I know that because I changed job and have recently been asked to work on a windows machine after a decade on Linux and the time lost every day is huge. To the point I am considering looking for a new job and would probably be willing to lower my income in favor of happiness in my day to day use of the tools.
Also you have to separate the professionals, the hobbyists and the vanity users.
The 1st population has very strong productivity requirements.
For the 2nd population the decision comes down to motivation. As a hobbyist I don't care if it takes me a few minutes more to process an image because my livelihood doesn't depend on it and I know how to appreciate the effort made by the volunteers that are building such a useful product and release it both for free and under an opensource license that nobody can pry out of my hands. The same way my more practical to maintain (because external cable routing) road bicycle is a better option for me and I don't need to ride the same aero bike as the Tour de France winner because those couple of watts gained here and here would only makes me reach home 2 minutes earlier without making the activity any more enjoyable.
It is not worth trying to convince the 3rd population, these are the ones who will buy an Ipad Pro instead of the base model only to use it to doom scroll social medias or lookup kitchen recipes. They just want the perceived best of everything and will look down as anything less than a status symbol.
> What about people who need to use creative tools?
Then for them a bad tool is still the best tool for the job of those available.
OP did say they don't push Linux on others. If you have a specific need that ties you to Windows (due to platform incompatibility that you have no power to change) then you use Windows.
No point the rest of us sticking with Windows if we want to move and don't have reason not to though.
I read on Reddit that some folks experienced latency issues. But I don't know whether it's to do with Linux in general or just some issues with their config / setup.
Tangentially, i find it amusing when people say they would be ok to switch to linux but not mac. It’s a valid preference, of course. The amusing part is how they justify it. Most of the time, it’s not the hardware that scares them away. Nope, it’s the software. Specifically, they believe mac has no CLI, no tools, no way to install your own software without paying apple, no open source stuff, none of that! You would think people working in IT should know about the origins of mac os, but i guess apple did too good of a job marketing their mac os devices to “content creators”.
Thank you Bunnie.
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