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The blissful Zen of a good side project

(joshcollinsworth.com)
567 points ingve | 3 comments | 04 Apr 25 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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cheschire ◴[04 Apr 25 21:34 UTC] No.43587832[source]▶
My latest side project started a couple weeks ago when I received an email from Cox that they would be forcing an unmanageable wifi network onto my router so that their cell customers would get more wifi coverage or something.

So I ordered a DOCSIS 3.1 modem off amazon, then went and rummaged around in my storage box for an old 2013 macbook air, installed ubuntu server on it, and finally learned how to setup a home router with DHCP, DNS, NAT, firewall, etc. Pihole was a lot of that, and I installed it as a docker container so that was a fun thing to learn to manage as well.

As an aside, ChatGPT made most of this possible. I have used *nix off and on for 25 years but haven't done serious system administration in at least 15 years. ChatGPT is definitely the crutch I needed to get off my ass and do more side projects.

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pitched ◴[04 Apr 25 21:48 UTC] No.43587975[source]▶
As much as vibe coding is obviously ridiculous, using it as a crutch purposefully in this way is amazing. I heard someone call it a tool for energy management once and I feel that
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1. ripped_britches ◴[05 Apr 25 00:57 UTC] No.43589303[source]▶
Why would it be obviously ridiculous if it granted the parent commenter so much productivity?

Perhaps the same obvious ridiculousness that manual agrarians passed upon the tractor.

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2. aloha2436 ◴[05 Apr 25 10:10 UTC] No.43592281[source]▶
Vibe coding is not using a chat interface to explore an unfamiliar domain like GP describes, it's letting an agent tool like Cursor or Goose do most of the work semi-independently.
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3. Cyphase ◴[05 Apr 25 21:34 UTC] No.43596991[source]▶
Vibe coding is not looking at the code, essentially. See what Simon Willison has written about it (the original term was coined[0] by Andrej Karpathy): https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/19/vibe-coding/

[0] Only two months ago!