It was embarrassing a year+ ago when much of this technology barely worked at all.
If you did not perceive a step change in model capabilities in late 2025, it's possible you are working on problems that are just too hard or not well aligned (e.g., arts and crafts). If you are working on software and need to move the occasional mountain, it's really hard to argue with the capabilities of contemporary models and harnesses.
This space is evolving rapidly. Faster in some areas than others, but you should still keep an open mind and adapt to the new realities as they emerge. Wishing for a thing to fail can blind you to more opportunities than you would probably be willing to reject if they were presented directly.
A year+ ago, LLMs worked nearly as good as they work today.
I say this as someone that uses LLMs on a daily basis. It is a moderately useful tool for software development, but it was already useful in January 2025 (to pick a random date). Check what models were available by then. There were improvements since them, but they were mostly marginal.
The thing is, ever since ChatGPT 4 days there are people claiming on a daily basis exactly what you are claiming now, and it feels pretty silly. Sometimes it's hard to not imagine the accounts breathlessly claiming 100x productivity as bots.
In other words, I presume that if you are 100x more productive now, you were a 1/100x developer before LLMs. I actually question the capabilities of anyone making claims like that.
The "100x productive" thing is some kind of bogeyman. It's pretty clear these things are useful and helpful and the degree to which they are such continually improves, but putting some specific large number on it is pointless.
If you didn't notice a difference between AI assisted coding in Jan 2025 and now beyond "marginal" improvements... well to be frank I don't think you've really been paying very close attention. It's a combination of the way we interact with the models and the models themselves, and this really did get much more effective in late 2025.
You can say the model improvements in that year were incremental, but the degree to which the overall capabilities have changed and what that means for software development is more than the sum of those parts.
One of the things not represented well by the hype cycle is how hype is a moving target. When "ai defenders and hype" assign a number to things, the early numbers can become closer to the later realities.
Ok but none of those articles are remotely interesting. At least if you’re into the science part of computer science — algorithms, data flow, software and hardware architecture, intimate knowledge of the machine — and not just productivitymaxxing to make a messy pile of CRUD widgets that nobody asked for.
It’s all influencer and hustle culture now. The joy of technical creation and understanding has evaporated from the mainstream in mere months. We’re surrounded by AI meat puppets wearing the masks of engineers.
We have access to and use the same tech, the difference is elsewhere.
> It was embarrassing a year+ ago when much of this technology barely worked at all.
The things some people say, how they talk about "outraged AI critics" what they would prefer those to be, would be fucking stupid even in first grade.
These, and things like "AI-generated news sites to attack critics" really speak for themselves. There is something worth really calling out here, and it fell out naturally.
Nov'25-Dec-25 something changed. I believe that was the time when Opus 4.5 was launched. (we went from function auto-complete to module auto-complete) People came from the vacations, and were like, make AI do your work. One could actually start offloading work to LLMs.
LLMs are clearly world changing technology. I'm no fan of the big corporations but I'm very excited to see the models themselves develop. I'm looking forward to the day I can self host these things.
You can? It’s pretty remarkable what you can do with Qwen 3.6 on decent hardware, and Gemma 12b on nearly anything. If you can’t own it, take something for a spin on vast.ai where you can get all kinds of machines on tap for ~$0.20/hour+
llama.cpp has gotten so good that you can really get optimized performance with a few flags or none at all, and serve any model on-demand. Spend $45 to have your own GLM 5.2 machine for an hour. If you can’t manage full utilization you’d get 33.2M tokens, retailing for $128.
It takes some smarts to use dumb models, but renting time for frontier tokens is easy math. Vast also lets you run on spot which is great for training or agents with harnesses that can accommodate uncertain model availability.
It's the metrics though. I've noticed that AI topics get hundreds of votes, that means either someone is trying to beat the algorithm to stay in the top news, or suddenly this place is filled with thousands of AI enthusiasts who ignore all the rest, non-AI topics. (Thousands because not everyone will upvote, so if only a fraction upvotes hundreds of upvotes should translate to thousands.)
This kind of conspiratorial thinking is ridiculous.
My life is affected for better or worse because of AI - I’m forced to use it at my day job as an R&D. It is perfectly rational and expected and preferable for AI to be the front news in a technology forum.
You probably don’t like AI but that is completely different from being affected by it.
I honestly think even the hypebros are less embarrassing than the full-on Luddites that think LLMs are an ontological evil.
It should really not surprise you that Hacker News, a community with an extremely technical audience, is interested in a bleeding edge technical tool that is literally completely reshaping the industry.
Hypebros and full-on Luddites that think LLMs are an ontological evil believe exactly the same things about LLMs.
The primary difference is that hypebros brag about incoming promised apocalypse, 40% unemployment, economy ruled by unaccountable monopolies and permanent underclass. Luddites think that such development would be a bad thing.
I dont think apocalypse will happen, but I do think AI companies are massive assholes who deserves all the pushback they can get for the way they doom hype themselves up.
It was embarrassing a year+ ago when much of this technology barely worked at all.
If you did not perceive a step change in model capabilities in late 2025, it's possible you are working on problems that are just too hard or not well aligned (e.g., arts and crafts). If you are working on software and need to move the occasional mountain, it's really hard to argue with the capabilities of contemporary models and harnesses.
This space is evolving rapidly. Faster in some areas than others, but you should still keep an open mind and adapt to the new realities as they emerge. Wishing for a thing to fail can blind you to more opportunities than you would probably be willing to reject if they were presented directly.
A year+ ago, LLMs worked nearly as good as they work today.
I say this as someone that uses LLMs on a daily basis. It is a moderately useful tool for software development, but it was already useful in January 2025 (to pick a random date). Check what models were available by then. There were improvements since them, but they were mostly marginal.
The thing is, ever since ChatGPT 4 days there are people claiming on a daily basis exactly what you are claiming now, and it feels pretty silly. Sometimes it's hard to not imagine the accounts breathlessly claiming 100x productivity as bots.
In other words, I presume that if you are 100x more productive now, you were a 1/100x developer before LLMs. I actually question the capabilities of anyone making claims like that.
The "100x productive" thing is some kind of bogeyman. It's pretty clear these things are useful and helpful and the degree to which they are such continually improves, but putting some specific large number on it is pointless.
If you didn't notice a difference between AI assisted coding in Jan 2025 and now beyond "marginal" improvements... well to be frank I don't think you've really been paying very close attention. It's a combination of the way we interact with the models and the models themselves, and this really did get much more effective in late 2025.
You can say the model improvements in that year were incremental, but the degree to which the overall capabilities have changed and what that means for software development is more than the sum of those parts.
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Sure it's better. 100x productivity is pure nonsense and there are other claims of this order.
Rejecting exaggerated claims doesn't mean that someone is not seeing any value.
One of the things not represented well by the hype cycle is how hype is a moving target. When "ai defenders and hype" assign a number to things, the early numbers can become closer to the later realities.
Ok but none of those articles are remotely interesting. At least if you’re into the science part of computer science — algorithms, data flow, software and hardware architecture, intimate knowledge of the machine — and not just productivitymaxxing to make a messy pile of CRUD widgets that nobody asked for.
It’s all influencer and hustle culture now. The joy of technical creation and understanding has evaporated from the mainstream in mere months. We’re surrounded by AI meat puppets wearing the masks of engineers.
We have access to and use the same tech, the difference is elsewhere.
> It was embarrassing a year+ ago when much of this technology barely worked at all.
The things some people say, how they talk about "outraged AI critics" what they would prefer those to be, would be fucking stupid even in first grade.
These, and things like "AI-generated news sites to attack critics" really speak for themselves. There is something worth really calling out here, and it fell out naturally.
Nov'25-Dec-25 something changed. I believe that was the time when Opus 4.5 was launched. (we went from function auto-complete to module auto-complete) People came from the vacations, and were like, make AI do your work. One could actually start offloading work to LLMs.
Yeah, this is nonsense. No one is arguing that AI is useless, but that there is a coordinated marketing campaign hyping it up.
"AI is useless" is a strawman^1 used by HN commenters
The commenters refer to the slightest skepticism or criticisms of "AI" hype as an argument that "AI is useless"
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20160303181716/http://web.uvic.c...
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Please don't imply every "AI defender" is a bot.
LLMs are clearly world changing technology. I'm no fan of the big corporations but I'm very excited to see the models themselves develop. I'm looking forward to the day I can self host these things.
You can? It’s pretty remarkable what you can do with Qwen 3.6 on decent hardware, and Gemma 12b on nearly anything. If you can’t own it, take something for a spin on vast.ai where you can get all kinds of machines on tap for ~$0.20/hour+
llama.cpp has gotten so good that you can really get optimized performance with a few flags or none at all, and serve any model on-demand. Spend $45 to have your own GLM 5.2 machine for an hour. If you can’t manage full utilization you’d get 33.2M tokens, retailing for $128.
It takes some smarts to use dumb models, but renting time for frontier tokens is easy math. Vast also lets you run on spot which is great for training or agents with harnesses that can accommodate uncertain model availability.
It's the metrics though. I've noticed that AI topics get hundreds of votes, that means either someone is trying to beat the algorithm to stay in the top news, or suddenly this place is filled with thousands of AI enthusiasts who ignore all the rest, non-AI topics. (Thousands because not everyone will upvote, so if only a fraction upvotes hundreds of upvotes should translate to thousands.)
The imbalance is what is off.
This kind of conspiratorial thinking is ridiculous.
My life is affected for better or worse because of AI - I’m forced to use it at my day job as an R&D. It is perfectly rational and expected and preferable for AI to be the front news in a technology forum.
You probably don’t like AI but that is completely different from being affected by it.
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I honestly think even the hypebros are less embarrassing than the full-on Luddites that think LLMs are an ontological evil.
It should really not surprise you that Hacker News, a community with an extremely technical audience, is interested in a bleeding edge technical tool that is literally completely reshaping the industry.
Hypebros and full-on Luddites that think LLMs are an ontological evil believe exactly the same things about LLMs.
The primary difference is that hypebros brag about incoming promised apocalypse, 40% unemployment, economy ruled by unaccountable monopolies and permanent underclass. Luddites think that such development would be a bad thing.
I dont think apocalypse will happen, but I do think AI companies are massive assholes who deserves all the pushback they can get for the way they doom hype themselves up.