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Or maybe not everyone's codebases are another TODO web app.

Obviously a bad businessman.

> there are other companies: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor,

Tell me about the different OSes each of Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor etc. run then that we can choose from.

It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.


> Tell me about the different OSes each of Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor etc. run then that we can choose from.

Other companies using Google's incredible R&D spend and selling phones that use it is not Google's failing.

And we're talking app stores. They all have app stores disconnected from Google's app store.

> It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.

No, on two counts. One: - and it's the same with Android - Apple exists, and so there's definitely not a monopoly from a lowercase personal computing perspective. Two: the conversation is about app stores. There are many app stores. It's like saying Microsoft doesn't have a PC hardware monopoly because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.


> Other companies using Google's incredible R&D spend and selling phones that use it is not Google's failing

On the contrary. I disagree.

It's possible to build something so successful and difficult that it rises to the level of public utility.


Why not say that Samsung's phone manufacturing is a public utility? That's successful and difficult.

Samsung is, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, one among many. Like Dell. It's different in kind, not in degree.

If you make that comparison you clearly don't understand the point being brought up by others here. Which is fine. I'm not going to convince you, I'm just informing you how I'll be voting.


> They all have app stores disconnected from Google's app store

No they don't. Certainly not ones where my bank app or Netflix is. This is being obtuse on purpose.


> No they don't.

Yes. They do.

> Certainly not ones where my bank app or Netflix is.

Blaming Google for this is just insanity.

> This is being obtuse on purpose.

Agreed.


Except OEMS don't ship Windows forks with their own SDKs, UI frameworks, custom L&F, alternative stores.

Contrary to Google, Microsoft has a clear position on what OEMs are allowed to do with Windows.


Android OEMs largely don't do that either except for some specific markets where Google isn't a thing. Google does have rules for when you want to be certified and have Google Play and Google services on board, which you mostly do in the West and so OEMs comply.

Sure, they may ship a Samsung skin or preload some of their own junk, same as on Windows. That doesn't make what they ship a different OS.

The one exception would be HarmonyOS, but that's somewhat China specific.


Xioami, Huawei and Samsung all have the points I mentioned, with Android forks.

Harmony NEXT is no longer based on Android.


> Xioami, Huawei and Samsung all have the points I mentioned, with Android forks

If I buy a Samsung phone in North America or Europe today I get Google Play as the main app store, Google services etc. and if I want to develop an app for a Samsung Android phone, I use the official Google SDK and Kotlin like for every other Android phone.

They have their own skin and store, but nobody really uses that. Google Play it is, be it Samsung or Xioami. They're very far from offering any kind of genuine alternative to Google Play, Google or Android. Their stores are junkware no different than ASUS preinstalling some antivirus nobody wants.

> Harmony NEXT is no longer based on Android.

That's my point. Huawei is the only OEM offering something different, but not easy to get in Western markets and thus doesn't have app mindshare.


Nothing prevents you from using Samsung, Xiaomi or Huawei stores and cloud services, Google Play is only the main store if you configure it as such.

Google SDK naturally doesn't have the support for OEMs specific features.

Leaving just one Samsung example here, too lazy to dump everything else,

https://developer.samsung.com/mobile/galaxy-sdk-getting-star...

I am yet to see anyone disable OneUI, MIUI, HyperOS, EMUI for bare bones AOSP UI.


Google lets these forks do anything they want except things that take away money from Google.

Xioami, Huawei and Samsung have their own stores.

Why are you pretending anyone uses them? These phones ship with Google Play and that's what people use.

Because people do use them as well, especially outside Western countries.

Too bad I'm in a western country. I'm glad parts of the world escaped the duopoly but my part still needs to be fixed.

Get a Jolla.

Does this fact take money away from Google?

Naturally.

I guess it's pretty much one of the best ways to see multiple things at the same time?

I don't think the analogy quite works. Hand crafted furniture etc. is still a valued skill, even commanding a premium price. I find it unlikely that hand crafted software will end up the same if the LLM generated one is cheaper and as far as most are concerned works sufficiently well.

Valued by whom? The market? Most people who craft as a hobby never sell a thing. They do it for the love of it. If something's only worth doing when someone pays a premium for it, boy, you're in for a hard time.

> Valued by whom? The market?

No. The people. You know, the Shown HN: I wrote a cool thing. Here's the thing on GitHub.

It's not about selling, it's about sharing and people appreciating it, using it, sharing tips to improve it. Most people who write FLOSS in their free time do it to solve their own problem first, but they also do it to share with others a cool thing they did etc.

> Most people who craft as a hobby never sell a thing

Sure. But they do craft for SOMEONE. Initially for themselves but at some point they want to show their skills to someone, even if only to family and friends. People are social animals.

I don't know that hand crafted software has the same appreciation as say woodworking.


> I don't know that hand crafted software has the same appreciation as say woodworking.

Yet. But I doubt you'll find that appreciation here on Hacker News, or on GitHub. You'll probably have to find a community of like-minded people who enjoy tinkering with software by hand, and those already exist, e.g. parts of the IndieWeb, or Lobsters. Posting your hand-crafted software here is a bit like a knitting enthusiast showing off their sweater at a textile industry trade fair.


> but it is definitely harder for humans to comprehend and express cleanly at a consistent rate

Part of the skill and joy of programming is to constantly work on improving my ability 'to comprehend and express cleanly' my intent in code.

I'd argue LLMs are anything but consistent.


This is the Ayn Rand trick; let's make government not work == government can never work well == let's cut all customer protections and end up with unfit for consumption beef and glass in your food == somehow it's still not the fault of the free market since after enough people get sick I guess they'll leave one star reviews on Google from their hospital beds == companies will self regulate to produce healthier food?

Bloat is real. One can simplify an organization while making it more effective. California broadly seems to be in the overcomplicated/ineffective quadrant.

Bloat is real. The point is if there's a regulation that should stop glass contamination in food and it doesn't then the answer isn't 'too much red tape, see?'.

It's that there's clearly been industry capture and the regulations no longer work. It doesn't mean the regulations themselves are automatically the problem.

It also doesn't mean every regulation is good or should exist, but that's not an argument I see anyone actually making. Only some people like to pretend like someone is making that argument, because the actual argument is harder to argue against.


"... seems to be ..."

Compared to what? Your string of comments are banal generalities that may or may not apply to this particular situation. Where else in this world at this time, is this particular governmental failing handled materially better?

Singapore? China? Russia? Switzerland? England?

I have sometimes learned interesting things from you (as a commenter) but there is nothing to learn here. It appears to be only diversion and distraction.


Perhaps. But you’d be more persuasive if you proposed ways to achieve the same or more effective controls over corporate abuses, just more efficiently. Instead you come across as a baby/bathwater proponent.

let's make capitalism == everything is for sale == let's buy government == let's make government work for the buyer == government works well ==...

Problem is in many places the AI push is to use agents for everything and so instead of writing code now you end up reviewing what the LLM generated for most of the day.

I dont have bandwidth to check ai made code

that's okay! nobody had the bandwidth to check compiler generated machine code either so we just stopped doing it

Its a false premise so often repeated. I am really tired. Compilers are ruleset: If you pass it one statement it'll produce the same output all the time. Its easy to verify it works. And if enough people have used it before and found no problems, there probably aren't many. Spoiler: People always find niche bugs.

But an LLM will generate you two completely different things today and tomorrow. Heck, even if you stash its changes and redo the same prompt.

They are NOT comparable at all.


Even though I disagree with (when I worked on CUDA at nvidia if I ran the TOT compiler on the same shaders one day and the next they could often change), the point is not to compare the two things side by side. It's just to say there are lots of times in life where for whatever reason we can give up old jobs.

Oh I dont disagree that it does replace some jobs. Why use junior developers when AI generates the same quality?

Just that comparing LLM to a compiler is nonsense. Because one is deterministic and the more using it, the better the quality will get.


Compiler generated machine code is however going from something (fairly) well defined (higher level representation) to something else about equally well defined (lower level representation).

In that sense it's a lot closer to translating Italian to English than what LLMs are doing.

I trust LLMs a lot more if I have a complete Go program I want them to rewrite in Rust.


Yeah, but compilers actually work reliably. LLMs do not.

Programmers don't work reliably too.

I find mostly what I do is think about how to improve the product, what the user wants, and what information the LLM needs and how to get it into the context window.

Sure. Ultimately it's still you who is responsible for the code you ship I assume, no matter how it came about.

> they're using it to scan for illegal construction

It's nice that an occupying army gets to decide what's illegal, am sure.


I guess? Seems pretty standard.

Yeah, it's pretty standard for an occupation. I wouldn't call occupation standard.

> Walmart

> Amazon

I guess customers yeah, Employees? not so much


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