> Were decomps/recomps a hobby because people wanted to make sure their old games could run on modern hardware and be extended with mods etc., or were they a hobby because people enjoyed the actual process of using Ghidra and reverse engineering by hand, and the decompiled game was just a side effect?
It’s interesting to dwell on what ‘we’ appreciated before versus what we appreciate now. Since LLMs lowered the bar, it feels like raw human effort has come to be held in higher esteem.
Are we going to re-evaluate what we were impressed with in the past based on that new metric? For example, will accomplishments by experienced engineers be devalued in comparison to accomplishments by outsiders? Will the software engineering equivalent of ‘folk’ or ‘outsider’ art become more valued? There will be a natural instinct to distrust outsider contributions because, well, how did they get so good?
Are some metrics of human effort going to be de rigueur going forward?
(4) could be a precursor to a sales pitch for a paid service and (6) obviously has malevolent purposes. But the rest... just people testing agents? Causing mischief?
There’s an interesting comment thread (including potential downsides) about this technique in the submission for “How to speed up the Rust compiler in September 2026” from a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49923594
It would be shocking if it weren't possible. Being a car does not confer any sort of magical protection against hacking because "it's just a car" or something.
It’s interesting to dwell on what ‘we’ appreciated before versus what we appreciate now. Since LLMs lowered the bar, it feels like raw human effort has come to be held in higher esteem.
Are we going to re-evaluate what we were impressed with in the past based on that new metric? For example, will accomplishments by experienced engineers be devalued in comparison to accomplishments by outsiders? Will the software engineering equivalent of ‘folk’ or ‘outsider’ art become more valued? There will be a natural instinct to distrust outsider contributions because, well, how did they get so good?
Are some metrics of human effort going to be de rigueur going forward?
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