Comment by micromacrofoot
3 hours ago
sure but if everyone is using AI, wouldn't the bar also be raised for everyone? you can output more faster and the bar for impressive is much higher
I suppose it would be interesting to have a random split, half use AI half don't, judging is blind and see what the outcome is
> you can output more faster
I think the point is your not outputting anything. For crud apps that's fine but an activity where the whole point of it is to show off your technical skills it seems quite pointless.
That's a bit nonsense though isn't it? The bot isn't showing up to the party and coming up with a plan to present. The person is operating the machine, and without the person there's no output.
If I can beat someone's technical skills with AI what are their technical skills worth? That's the question that a lot of people are struggling with right now.
If you can come up with a problem that a human can solve better without AI, then that's an interesting competition and the tools involved wouldn't end up mattering much.
Now if the contest is "who can develop the best/smallest/fastest app without AI" that's completely fine, there are similarly "who can cut the most grass with a scythe" competitions and everyone involved knows what they're signing up for and has a good time. Nothing wrong with that.
> The person is operating the machine, and without the person there's no output.
> If I can beat someone's technical skills with AI what are their technical skills worth? That's the question that a lot of people are struggling with right now.
I could turn up on a chess competition with a chess machine and beat my opponents with it, but that is not the point of chess competitions
1 reply →
The demoscene is all about showing off technical skill.
Using AI requires next to zero technical skill.
That's the key.
I think the problem is that you think of demoscene as just fancy videos, but it's actually about making a fancy video while dealing with serious constraints. In the classic demoscene of the 80s/90s, that constraint was processing power or RAM. In the modern day, processing power is immense, so people make the constraints artificial, such as putting a limit on your executable size.
Using AI to produce a demo within constraints is simply not impressive.
AI isn't a tool the way a debugger, compiler, or IDE are. It's more like outsourcing your work to someone else, then taking the credit for producing it.
> if everyone is using AI, wouldn't the bar also be raised for everyone
Why would I care about vibe coded a demo when I could just ask Claude to make the same thing for me?
If you have two demos side by side, one AI and the other human, the human version is immediately more interesting because it showcases a high level of skill that you may aspire to achieve one day. The AI version is as forgettable as the person who prompted it, because it does not demonstrate that person's skill.
Same reason why we generally find weightlifters to be impressive even though machines have been able to out-lift anyone for thousands of years.
That said, I don't think most people dislike using it for tedious work or information searching. Similar to how most are still impressed by a lifter using a Smith machine to stabilize an absurd weight.
Why would you care about any code product when you could ask Claude to make the same thing for you? Again, this is a question many are struggling with right now.
There will always be competitions that limit tool use, and competitions that don't. There are many examples that go either way.
The demoparty Assembly actually has an vibe coded demo competition. And maybe that is a solution to the problem, but it just does not interest me.
Sceners are no strangers to imposing artificial constraints on themselves. Just look at high end 64k, 8k, 4k, and 256byte intro coding, there is no real reason for it other than the challenge. So I really hope this mindset can be applied to AI use as well.