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What reversing, modernising old games tells us about the economic impact of AI

135 points · 90 comments · keeda

  1. Kuyawa · · focus · HN ↗
    I ported Prince of Persia to Swift for MacOS [1] over the weekend using DeepSeek Harness, spent three hours in total, $3 in tokens, and got a playable and enjoyable game bringing back good ol' memories

    It is a faithful port of Jordan Mechner's 1989 original game and the guiding idea was just one sentence: port the game exactly, rewrite the engine completely

    I didn't write a single line of code or test, not even the readme. I don't know if it delivered swift, assembly or brainfvck as directed but the result is spectacular and I would never had done it in ten lifetimes

    Coding is solved, human programming is dead, apps will cost close to zero and those who don't see the writing on the wall are hopeless

    [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kuyawa&#x2F;prince" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kuyawa&#x2F;prince

    1. happymellon · · focus · HN ↗
      I&#x27;m trying to think of the number of projects that consisted of:

      The work has already been done. Recreate this to be identical but just in a different programming language.

      I&#x27;m going to say never.

      1. __alexs · · focus · HN ↗
        This was literally the first coding job I ever got paid to do.

        I would decompile the Google browser extension to extract the hash algorithm they used to sign page rank lookup requests, rewrite it in PHP and ship it to SEOs on weird forums.

        They updated the hash every few months and I made enough money to pay for some summer activities as a teen.

      2. stubish · · focus · HN ↗
        Recreating the IBM PC bios, enabling clone PCs and changing the market completely?

        One of the points the article makes is that copying is now essentially free. So if you spend money building something, someone else can copy it and use all the money they didn&#x27;t spend marketing their version. And why license software anyway, when you can just clone it and even tweak it better towards your business cases? Will you be paying your Adobe subscription or buying the knockoff version of Photoshop?

        1. happymellon · · focus · HN ↗
          So your argument is that cloning is such a low bar, that LLMs have solved coding by making innovation or new products not worth anyone&#x27;s time?

          That&#x27;s not really what AI Boosters mean by &quot;solving coding&quot;.

          1. stubish · · focus · HN ↗
            The article gives the timeframe at a decade or more. But I think it is safe to say that when it can happen, it will happen. IBM PC popular? Clone it and get in on the profits. Flappy Birds becomes popular? Hundreds of copies get released trying to get in on the money. Wordle? Even more. Article talks about moats to stop this and how changes in IP law enforcement are eroding them. We already have AI companies complaining about competitors stealing their efforts, unable to appreciate the irony on how the models were initially created and the precedents they set. Maybe the sinophobes will be right and Deepseek just a cheap knockoff of American AI, but will you care if the price is right?
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