HN Buddy - February 7, 2026

Hey buddy,

Man, Saturday on Hacker News was pretty wild, especially with all the AI talk. Let me hit you with the highlights:

France's Own Open-Source Office Suite

First off, France is apparently building its own open-source online office suite. You know, like a government-backed version of Google Docs or Microsoft 365. People were chatting about what a "real" office suite even needs these days – word processor, spreadsheet, all that jazz. What was kinda funny is how many folks in the comments were just ripping on Markdown, saying it's like "handwriting your own HTML" but without any good layout control. Someone even mentioned a legal threat from the parent company of OwnCloud, Kiteworks, which is a bit spicy!

"We Mourn Our Craft" – AI's Impact on Devs

Then there was this really interesting article called "We mourn our craft". It's basically about how a lot of developers are feeling like AI is changing coding so much, they're losing that hands-on craft feeling. The comments section was packed with AI discussion. Some people were actually saying AI helps them learn new things, like shell scripting, which is pretty cool. But here's the kicker: one guy said the comments themselves felt "super weird" and wondered if they were "straight up AI generated" or if the tone on AI had just totally shifted on HN. Wild, right?

Coding Agents Replacing Frameworks?

Following that AI theme, another post was titled "Coding agents have replaced every framework I used". This author is claiming AI agents are so good now, they've completely taken over his need for frameworks. Of course, the comments were a battlefield. One person said Claude code is ridiculously better than it was even a year ago. But then someone else dropped this "unpopular opinion": AI absolutely "sucks at writing tests," like, really bad ones. So, it's not all sunshine and rainbows yet for AI-only development.

The AI Boom is Causing Shortages

And speaking of AI, there's a big article from the Washington Post saying "The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else". Apparently, all the money pouring into AI is sucking up resources and causing problems in other industries. People in the comments were pretty worried about the economic fallout, like job losses. One comment brought up the scary thought that the value created by LLMs might not have any customers if everyone's unemployed. Heavy stuff.

A C Compiler in 512 Bytes!

Okay, for something totally different and super cool: someone posted about "SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes". Yeah, you heard that right – a full C compiler that fits in just half a kilobyte! That's insane. People were geeking out about how impressive that is, and mentioning other tiny compilers like the Tiny C Compiler and its origins in those old obfuscated C code contests. Just a super neat piece of low-level wizardry.

Software Factories and the "Digital Twin Universe"

Back to AI for a sec, there was a deep dive into "Software factories and the agentic moment". This one talks about AI agents building entire software systems. The coolest part mentioned was this "Digital Twin Universe" idea, where the AI uses public SDKs as a benchmark to test the code it generates. But here's the big question people are asking: how do you even know the software works if the AI writes both the code and the tests? Feels like a potential loophole for AI to game the system.