5/27/2026 at 2:30:15 PM
Very cool in theory. Unfortunately it's just 12klocs of a vibe-coded week-end project.Edit: it's actually 50klocs since the pyOpenVBA dependency is from the same author and has been made the week-end before.
by stymaar
5/27/2026 at 3:16:59 PM
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.by airstrike
5/27/2026 at 3:53:13 PM
> especially of other people's work.Claude ain't “other people” so I don't think this applies.
By the way, the guidelines proscribe AI-generated comments, so I don't see why AI-generated posts should be treated differently.
by stymaar
5/27/2026 at 5:38:05 PM
> Claude ain't “other people” so I don't think this applies.Claude didn't make the post or come up with the idea or execute it independently, so not sure how that applies.
If you want to comment on the code quality or the engineering itself, that would be a good critical comment that teaches us something.
> By the way, the guidelines proscribe AI-generated comments, so I don't see why AI-generated posts should be treated differently.
That's your opinion and not the guideline, so again not sure how it applies.
You're free to e-mail hn@ycombinator.com and suggest, but I'm sure it crossed their mind when they wrote about AI comments so I don't think it's been decided that AI-aided projects are somehow automatically invalidated.
by airstrike
5/27/2026 at 5:48:16 PM
This is a nice demonstration of how AI enables people to build things that just wouldn't have existed before because the hassle was prohibitive. Negativity is still unwarranted here.by bitwize
5/27/2026 at 11:08:56 PM
AI ain't magical, you can vibe code a plausible project in a week-end, but having something that actually works still requires lots of work, in the form of testing and iterating on the result in order to get a working piece of software.Until you've done this work, the result is just a low-effort piece of content.
by stymaar
5/28/2026 at 12:14:49 AM
Knowledge of it being absolutely useless slop is very useful for those of us that want to avoid all this garbage. There’s nothing shallow about it, it taught me that this project is slop.by hananova
5/27/2026 at 4:21:39 PM
When was this specific guideline written? In 2008? And dies it really apply when we’re talking about slop?by wiseowise
5/27/2026 at 5:39:36 PM
When it was written has no bearing on its validity.It applies when you're talking about someone else's work. Not every repo is slop. If you want to make a claim that this code is bad, then claim that rather than saying "they used AI therefore it's bad" which is, as the rule says, a shallow dismissal that teaches us nothing.
by airstrike
5/28/2026 at 7:39:32 AM
> It applies when you're talking about someone else's work.It doesn’t apply when writing a thoughtful reply takes more time than original “project” ever took.
by wiseowise
5/28/2026 at 10:30:31 AM
> If you want to make a claim that this code is bad, then claim that rather than saying "they used AI therefore it's bad"I'm not claiming that at all. The fact that it's AI written isn't even disclosed anywhere on that repo!
The reason why I posted about this being AI slop is after I checked the repo.
> Not every repo is slop.
But this one is. Hence my criticism.
> It applies when you're talking about someone else's work.
The issue at stake is that I'm not criticizing someone else's work, I'm actually criticizing someone's lack of it. This repo is low effort content and that's the problem.
by stymaar
5/27/2026 at 4:45:32 PM
As long as no one is trying to hide anything, I won't complain. Working on VBA outside of Excel seems useful, especially if reliably integrated with source control.Ultimately this project's success will be determined by its test suite... it's tough to get quality tests by vibe coding.
by password4321