Ask HN: Where has creativity in software gone?

You say this like there's nobody out there working on transistors or C or Emacs or Sqlite. There definitely are.

I've worked in C, used Emacs for almost two decades now, and work(ed) on plenty of SQL. We're tired, older. You either were part of the cohort who rode the wave of 150K starting salaries out of college or a bootcamp 15-20 years ago or not. And if you were, you now have graduated to making upwards of that and displacing locals out of their small rural communities because the economy is bad there and you can. Or you weren't part of that cohort and your work and hobby, which was never making tons of money, is now less likely than ever to make money and you're being displaced the former group pretending like programming is gauche.

Looking at https://news.ycombinator.com/show right now, it's not too bad. The #1 (Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard) is definitely creative. The next 3 (budgeting, AI monitor, scraper) are boring, the next (How Random Are You?) is so-so...and the pattern continues like this.

The pessimist says creative projects are rare nowadays, an optimist says they're still coming out. You may also dislike the vibe-coded "...Craft" projects, but seemingly building a production-capable software in days is something that has never been done before and IMO inspiring.

I thought mine was very creative, but it never got off new show hn.

Sorry no C, Emacs. Just some database stuff.

For no particular reason, I've been browsing HN posts from before November 30, 2022. There's a treasure trove of content from that era. Maybe I've just been hit by a wave of nostalgia.

One reason is that AI seems to be pushing everyone to be "fast" than "better".

I think we are at the beginning of a new golden age of software engineering, but not in the way we think. The cost of creating software might go down to zero with AI. That doesn't mean that no skills are needed. Quite the opposite. If AI would create outstanding code, then it would win every Kaggle coding competition on the planet. But it doesn't.

]1] https://github.com/storytold/artcraft [2] https://huggingface.co/blog/a2aprotocol/universal-modder-a-p... [3] https://jdsemrau.substack.com/p/jamming-with-jev-and-claude-... [4]

If your project is too creative no one will pay attention to it and you need a crazy amount of attention to get funding now

Its not gone, just that the bar has been increased.

I have to question if things are less creative, or whether we're just getting more 'uncreative' projects released on a regular basis. There's a flood of software being released now that AI models have become 'good' enough to build basic stuff without any prior technical knowledge, and since most software is being built by folks looking for a quick buck, it's probably not going to be all that original.

Original software is still being made, it's just buried under a flood of AI generated slop.

The average person or company's idea for a piece of software is an unoriginal spin on a likely already overdone concept.

Add this to the more technically original projects perhaps not being posted on Hacker News as often (many folks here would say the site's experienced its Eternal September moment, and a fair few of them have almost stopped using it altogether), and well, you're just seeing what moderately technical people are making with the tools of the moment.

Survivorship bias.

I was talking to someone about game development this morning. The scheduling to make a simple commercial indie game five years ago was roughly 20 hr market research, 10 hr gameplay prototyping, 10 hr art prototype, 20 hr vertical slice, 80 content & level development, 60 hr on polish. Plus some more on marketing.

Now today with AI, what has changed?

Those who follow a process may instead be spending 5 hrs on market research, 3 on prototyping, 30 on levels, and 100 hrs on polish.

These games are a little better and less painful to make. But the output is roughly the same as before.

Those who don't follow a process will spend 15 hours prototyping, 10 on polish, then find that nobody buys it and blames distribution.

But back in the past, these same people would have never reached a release point. The output of slop has multiplied enormously.

creativity for some people is about architecting solutions, teams or getting an idea to the ground, so there will be always creativity in any field in life

It's not gone, it's just flooded with people who, with the new era of ai, can build whatever they want.. we need to either dig deep to find the creative stuff, or wait for the current wave of ai slop to die out, for some products to win the "obvious" products market and then i think we will see a new era of creative products (since only creative product can shine in a world of obvious slop)

Look here: https://100r.co/