Show HN: I spent 3 years reverse-engineering a 40 yo stock market sim from 1986

Re:Show HN: I spent 3 years reverse-engineering a 40 yo stoc... by rgovostes on Saturday February 14, 2026 @09:46AM (#47014913)

Setting aside the style, I think you asked for more output — 5,000 words — than your prompt supports, so the model repeated the same details over and over to stretch out the story after it hits the major notes.

Obvious tells are repetitive numeric details: the number of lines of code (mentioned six times!), the number of pages in the manual, the ages of the developers, the age of the game, etc. The narrative itself also repeats, like the Steam rejection included verbatim twice, especially after the Prologue hit most of the beats in the first 400 words.

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Re:Show HN: I spent 3 years reverse-engineering a 40 yo stoc... by benstopics on Saturday February 14, 2026 @10:22AM (#47015176)

I did that on purpose, I thought it needed to be reiterated. See, you're blaming the AI but that was me. I did not specify a word count. Maybe I should have let the AI write the whole thing? Like I said I am not a great writer, especially content editing. Even with AI I couldn't make everyone happy. Oh well.

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Re:Show HN: I spent 3 years reverse-engineering a 40 yo stoc... by IshKebab on Saturday February 14, 2026 @12:16PM (#47016242)

Dude why do you meet every valid criticism with such passive aggressive defence? It doesn't come off well at all.

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