Ask HN: Building a Non-AI tool feels surprisingly refreshing for me

Lately, I’ve been working on a small side project: a web tool for creating radial and circular layouts using CSS only. What I’ve enjoyed the most is that it’s completely non-AI—just code, logic, and design decisions made by hand.

I have nothing against AI, but I found that building something without it has been almost therapeutic. Of course I know it is just a side project. I mean I'm not depend on its success for living.

It also made me wonder: in a world where AI is taking over so many creative and technical tasks, is there still a place for the joy of purely handcrafted software? Have others here felt something similar when working on non-AI projects?

Side project url https://github.com/zumerlab/orbit/

6 points | by tinchox6 3 days ago

2 comments

  • muzani 3 days ago
    I like writing dialogue. AI gives me some idea of how another person would respond. It does rhythm and wit very well. But it doesn't understand phonetics. It writes dialogue like a 16 year old, enthusiastic and amateurish.

    I like riffing off AI's creativity. It gives me creative ideas for scenes and conflicts, and I carve whatever it gives me into something pretty, like a lapidarist.

    Also AI helped in writing an engine for it - things like VNs don't normally allow for the pacing of good dialogue. So I had to do something to allow for a little back and forth, interruptions, change of tone, etc.

  • 1750horse 3 days ago
    I strongly relate to this. At some level, the rise of AI assistants a few years after I learned to code was a major, and unpleasant, inflection point in my enjoyment of programming. Debugging became less satisfying, and the sense of mastery I once enjoyed creating something out of nothing seems cheapened by its automation.
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    • tinchox6 3 days ago
      I totally agree with you. I don’t know if there will be any value in the future in continuing to code without AI assistants. I mean, in the physical world, handmade goods are valuable… but the question is whether anyone will value handcrafted code. I hope so