alt Hacker NewsThings like this used to be a lot cooler before LLMs. It used to show someone actually spent time and worked hard on something mostly pointless. Now you can just point an LLM to it, and be done. Projects like this have lost their magic.
Replies
Yes, that's how I feel, too. This is "cool," but LLM made such projects unremarkable.
Back then, you could appreciate the work someone put into silly-but-fun project like that, we could read about the developer's story and the code could be interesting to look at.
Nowadays, it's great that LLMs let people express their creativity, but it doesn't pique my curiosity the way it used to. As a result, I don't see the point of sharing them on HN, but apparently many people disagree.
So proof of work adds value to you. I'd say don't dismiss an idea just because an LLM helped do it. The idea is all that matters anymore.
I’ve been using LLMs for a while now and this particular idea hasn’t occurred to me. So yes - I still do appreciate the creativity.
The creator is a product designer not a software engineer so before LLM she would have had the idea and never created it
I don't want to be presumptuous, but people that say this have rarely really ever built anything mostly pointless. But maybe you can prove me wrong and point me to your github.
Building pointless things is often about prototyping some idea, seeing if something can be done, or just messing around. It's never been about wrestling with OS APIs or grokking out-of-date docs. LLMs handle all this stupid boring stuff so you can do something cool that you think is cool.
I disagree. I like that weird and quirky can exist again since the "cost" is so low compared to "just use shadcn on tailwinds" so everything can look the same. LLMs can make slop for sure, but this is fun and more of what the internet needs no matter if its a LLM or a human behind the code.
Making this good still takes some effort. One can still tinker it like a little art project.
Beyond what others have said about creativity, projects still take work to iron out. LLMs can speed up work 10x but they can’t validate very well.
I totally disagree. I respect efforts made without LLMs, but if a person is enabled by one to express their creative ideas like this, that's awesome too.
I dunno, xsnow was just as boring in 2006 as it is in 2026. Pointless apps are made and forgotten all the time, I don't think it's a bad thing.
“The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't.” - Douglas Adams