The FAQ was pretty clear about not using AI to get on the leaderboard last year.

Another vote for Haskell. It’s fun and the parsing bit is easy. I do struggle with some of the 2d map style questions which are simpler in a mutable 2d array in c++. It’s sometimes hard to write throwaway code in Haskell!

There are a surprising number of ways to generate the fizzbuzz sequence. I always liked this one:

  fizzbuzz n = case (n^4 `mod` 15) of
    1  -> show n
    6  -> "fizz"
    10 -> "buzz"
    0  -> "fizzbuzz"

  fb :: IO ()
  fb = print $ map fizzbuzz [1..30]

I've always been a big fan of apple and have defended them in the past, but iOS 26 is a dumpster fire. There are visual corruptions and glitches all over the place and transparent text floating over transparent text. It's not even whether I like the style or not, it's just broken. Who signed off on this? No product in this state would ever leave one of my teams, I'd resign first.

The UK government want to get on with blocking websites and VPNs as soon as possible. 4chan was obviously not going to comply and was picked to allow ofcom to quickly move onto the next step.

I wanted to like this but it doesn’t reflect my experience in the uk or that of close family members. It seems to be some sort of burnout simulator?

I became a programmer because I like to write code. Having an llm write code for me is like building a robot that eats cake.

The kind of things that LLMs can make without tremendous amounts of hand holding... Are they the kind of projects that you like to write code for?

I became a programmer because I want to explore the edge of what's possible. I'm finding it still satisfying when I'm doing it via LLM. They're only good at spitting out entire projects when those projects resemble many that already exist.

I think this is accurate.

Beautifully put. I'm about as excited for LLMs as an artist would be for a robot that can paint. I know a lot of people out there can't imagine actually enjoying programming though.

One does not have to be a carpenter to have furniture, and one does not have to become a software engineer to get computers to do things.

Unless you are into it, you’ll realize that it’s quite a grind and your time is much better spent getting somebody who is into it (and thanks to that became an expert to it) get computer to do what you want faster and better.

There’s nothing wrong with trying it, if anything to find out whether you are into it or not in the first place. If you stick to it, chances are you are into it—just like you don’t become a carpetner simply because you want to have furniture: perhaps that’s one of your initial impulses, but you are also mentally compatible with the process and tick some other boxes.

On that note, what does it mean to be “into it” when it comes to programming? What is a “good” reason to become a software engineer? To me, it’s about the inclination to tinker, the eventual payoff of the dopamine rush from seeing puzzle pieces fall together, and the desire to own the process, do things by yourself even as you stand on the shoulders of giants.

Between these things, LLM-driven development strikes me as somewhat weak on tinkering (there may be some, but less, and much less precise and deterministic), and very weak on the desire to do things by yourself. Of course, that shouldn’t invalidate anyone’s personal experience.

For me it is both. I love certain kinds of programming, and don't enjoy other kinds. I'm naturally very good at some kinds, and not good at other kinds, despite putting in enormous effort.

I guess ideally I'd get a job that is perfectly aligned with this profile (a work in progress!), but AI allows me to deal with the reality I have now in a much more pleasant and productive way.

Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of research showing that perspective is usually a distortion of some kind. Which makes sense, you have someone at your shoulder constantly reassuring you and bubbling ideas; I can see how it feels productive. Many report feeling more stressed, because the spaces where they used to think are no longer there.

> Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of research showing that perspective is usually a distortion of some kind.

I saw 1 study which suggested this.[1] Were there more?

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

I'm sure you can and will still be able write code. It's just you'll be getting paid less and less if you do it for a living.

Do you think a senior programmer will earn less money because the company now can have a junniors for 250$ a month?

You can still write code without AI. But for people who actually have the goal of solving problems they can now solve much more problems!

That’s a nice prospect. What worries me is the point at which I’m no longer a required part of the problem solving process.

For what it's worth, collecting new problems to solve is actually the main fuel for improving the AIs, so if GenAI becomes good at creating problems, which it can iterate on tackling, then there's a flywheel going.

A lot of people in this thread seem to enjoy the taste of boot and are spending a lot of words trying to say the OSA isn't a big deal. A bit of a sad attitude for a forum called HackerNews. This is massive overreach by the government, we shouldn't have to ID ourselves to message friends on bluesky, read homebrew forums or, soon, use xbox voice chat. The government won't give up this power, it's clearly the thin end of the wedge.

All those parents that couldn’t use parental controls to limit what their children see in a browser are not suddenly going to start policing VPNs. This is terrible legislation wrapped in terrible advice.

Have to agree. I don’t think we should stop ai progress, just that I think we built a bad thing along the way. I will never buy a video game that I know has ai generated content, I want to see some art, not a soulless prediction of what art might look like.

> I will never

Bet you $10 that in five years' time you will have.

It's not really practical but I would take the bet that I will never /intentionally/ buy a game with AI generated assets. I just don't see that AI generated art has any value to it. I'm sure you could sneak some past me, it's getting harder to spot all the time.

My guess is that in five years’ time there won’t be any games that don’t include any, and also people will really have stopped caring so much