‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

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. thin_carapace · · focus · HN ↗
      human programming sure is dead for translating content A to content B, this is the most appropriate use case for our current modelling of generative ai. translation is one field of many, did something in particular give you confidence that being good at translation implies universal applicability?
      1. Kuyawa · · focus · HN ↗
        This is just an example related to the post itself about porting old games. AI exceeds all expectations. Personally I&#x27;ve been using AI for the last six months in many different scenarios and in all it just blows me away. The more I use it the less code I write

        Do you have an example of what you think AI is not capable of in programming? I can give it a try

        1. thin_carapace · · focus · HN ↗
          regarding translation I totally agree with you, ai excels at complex translative skills eg. art, reverse engineering. programming is another good example in isolation, like a web site or simple application. although, from my experience, excessive generative ai usage dulls the imagination, and distances programmers from their code (eg your admission to not knowing the readme of your project).

          i do not have an answer for your question, I may only extend from it tangentially. can you think of a way that generative ai could be offered such that end users ultimately experience a greater (rather than lesser) capacity to understanding their programming output? the loss of this understanding is one of many reasons I don&#x27;t like to use generative ai.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.