Absolutely wild to see this take downvoted. While it's abundantly clear that Hacker News has long since become a mouthpiece for the AI investment machine, I really hadn't felt the loss of strong engineering ethos until recently.

I didn’t downvote, but if I were to it would be due to the dismissive phrase “slop machine” rather than the message, which I agree with.

So now we're downvoting the idea that people should have a strong understanding of how to code? We're cooked. A week does seem about right for getting to 90% of optimal AI agent use if you earnestly explore its boundaries.

The slop machine is stupidly easy to use. Recently switched jobs and got to use Claude Code for the first time. Literally just talk to it. There's nothing to learn.

Absolutely, wise man (not an entrepreneur) writes a message to his students.

We seem to forget what it was to be a freshman.

At that age, you look up to anyone who’s more experienced.

Yes, you have to deliver, iterate and make mistakes very often to learn from them.

But as the text clearly states: relationships, people and justice matter more.

Where can I sign it?