Top all-time · #6255
Vivek Haldar
Personal blog · vivekhaldar.com/articlesaiprogramming
Vivek Haldar's personal blog at vivekhaldar.com covers ai and programming. Since 2011, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 51 times, most often “When Compilers Were the 'AI' That Scared Programmers”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Vivek Haldar's posts, mainly 'When compilers were the AI...', as a historical parallel to fears about AI coding tools. Another linked post covers Emacs as a login shell.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- When Compilers Were the 'AI' That Scared Programmers4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-03-16
- LLMs Are Compilers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-26
- I Cut an AI Agent's Token Use by 94%2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-13
- A Spiritual Successor to Emacs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-02-15
What Hacker News says?
I've heard from people older than me that this is how people felt about compilers. https://vivekhaldar.com/articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai... He provides some sources (7) at the bottom of the article. To pick one, the following has a video interview with one of the founders of Fortran: https://www.ibm.com/history/fortran#:~:text=Fortran%20was%20... So we're not making up stuff, this perspective was ubiquitous a…
Comment linking /articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai--that-scared-programmers/
on “AI Is Making Developers Dumb”Submitted The programmer's climb as a story · 8 points
HN discussionOr, use the One True Shell[1]: https://vivekhaldar.com/articles/emacs-as-a-login-shell/ As a less joke but also more joke: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/eshell.h... 1: it was going to be much funnier if I could have found the link where someone used emacs as Xsession or similar but this one will do
Comment linking /articles/emacs-as-a-login-shell/
on “TIL: Some surprising code execution sources in bash”Submitted Subject-object-verb, or– how we use AI as a story · 5 points
HN discussionWe trust those tools to do the job correctly now . https://vivekhaldar.com/articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai...
Comment linking /articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai--that-scared-programmers
on “LLMs are mirrors of operator skill”Submitted Coding Agents Are Outliers as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThey absolutely did: https://vivekhaldar.com/articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai...
Comment linking /articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai--that-scared-programmers/
on “Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore”Submitted I Cut an AI Agent's Token Use by 94% as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhile I share some of the feelings about 'not understanding what is actually happening under the hood', I can't help but think about how this feeling is the exact same response that programmers had when compilers were invented: https://vivekhaldar.com/articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai... We are completely comfortable now letting the compilers do their thing, and never seem to worry that we "don't know what is act…
Comment linking /articles/when-compilers-were-the--ai--that-scared-programmers/
on “Coding Models Are Doing Too Much”Submitted When Compilers Were the 'AI' That Scared Programmers as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> This is something some have a hard time understanding, but some of us prefer a non-modal editor and like having simpler key chords instead of key sequences. I'll second this. I literally grew up on VI - my dad installed it with UNIX tools on the family 486 running MS-DOS. Then I dedicated a week to learning Emacs around the turn of the century, and I've never looked back. To be sure, I still whip out vim for quick…
Comment linking /articles/the-levels-of-emacs-proficiency/
on “Emacs Is Not Enough”Submitted When Compilers Were the 'AI' That Scared Programmers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Dijkstra would've (incorrectly) HATED vibe-coding as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted "But LLMs are not deterministic " as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Spec-Driven Vibe-Coding as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted LLMs Are Compilers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How (and why) to be an effective meat proxy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Unix Was a Love Letter to Agents as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Coding Agents Are Outliers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Natlang Code as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Mac-vs-PC Story Playing Out in CLI Agents as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The case against local LLMs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I use AI (late 2024) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The De-Nerdification of Programming as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Re: I Don't Use Copilot as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted LLMs Are Compilers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Spiritual Successor to Emacs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Spiritual Successor to Emacs as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Deus Ex Machina as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Integrating Decision Models into Agent Harnesses as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
