Top all-time · #1538
Addy Osmani
Personal blog · addyo.substack.comaiprogrammingcareer
Addy Osmani writes Elevate, a personal blog at addyo.substack.com about ai, programming and career. Since 2024, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 64 times, most often “The 80% Problem in Agentic Coding – Addy Osmani”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-14, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Addy Osmani's Substack for "The 70% problem" post on how far LLM coding gets before stalling. Commenters call it a good overview of the limits of vibe coding.
- Recommended for · 2 comments
- Called a good article on LLMs getting about 70% of the way, and a great overview of the limits of vibe coding.
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.
Addy Osmani's newsletter on elevating your effectiveness. Join his community of 600,000 readers across social media. Click to read Elevate, by Addy Osmani, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
Most-linked posts?
- The 80% Problem in Agentic Coding – Addy Osmani4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-01-29
- The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-12-06
- Death of the IDE?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-03-20
- Prompt engineering playbook for programmers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-05-27
- The AI-Native Software Engineer3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-07-01
- Loop Engineering3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-06-09
- 21 Lessons from 14 Years at Google2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-13
- I Use Cline for AI Engineering2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-30
- Personal Software: The Unbundling of the Programmer?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-02-10
- Code Review in the Age of AI2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-06
What Hacker News says?
Original posts: https://twitter.com/addyosmani/status/1739052802314539371 https://addyo.substack.com/p/first-do-it-then-do-it-right-th...
Comment linking /p/first-do-it-then-do-it-right-then
on “First do it, then do it right, then do it better”Submitted The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding as a story · 649 points
HN discussionWhich has been proved again and again to only get you 70% there [1]. [1] https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-70-problem-hard-truths-abou...
Comment linking /p/the-70-problem-hard-truths-about
on “When AI promises speed but delivers debugging hell”Submitted Prompt engineering playbook for programmers as a story · 464 points
HN discussionYep a good article about this: https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-70-problem-hard-truths-abou... LLMs are good for the first 70% (I'd argue probably 50%).
Comment linking /p/the-70-problem-hard-truths-about
on “Using LLMs and Cursor to finish side projects”Submitted Avoiding skill atrophy in the age of AI as a story · 373 points
HN discussionYes, that's all true. Even so, vibe coding empowers anyone who can write clear instructions to build software, but the limits of the technology get hit pretty quickly by non-developers and they have little recourse. This blog post https://addyo.substack.com/p/the-70-problem-hard-truths-abou... is a great overview. The tech will get better and better (I couldn't imagine we'd be doing this a year ago) but to be truly…
Comment linking /p/the-70-problem-hard-truths-about
on “Show HN: Time travel debugging AI for more reliable vibe coding”Submitted Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work as a story · 259 points
HN discussion> But that doesn't mean that I have to lay any more credence to the guys who have, since time immemorial, said "this new thing makes something easier; it will make us worse because we do not slog as much". I don't use LLMs myself, but the anecdotes about skill atrophy seem credible. From the OP: "Even for me it shows. I tried to write some test code recently and I absolutely forgot how to write table tests because I…
Comment linking /p/avoiding-skill-atrophy-in-the-age
on “Re: My AI skeptic friends are all nuts”Submitted I Use Cline for AI Engineering as a story · 100 points
HN discussionAddy Osmani also wrote today about this https://addyo.substack.com/p/conductors-to-orchestrators-the...
Comment linking /p/conductors-to-orchestrators-the-future
on “After the Last Git Commit”Submitted AI Won't Kill Junior Devs – But Your Hiring Strategy Might as a story · 59 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Prompt Engineering Playbook for Programmers as a story · 18 points
HN discussionSubmitted Beyond the 70%: Maximizing the human 30% of AI-assisted coding as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSubmitted More lessons from 14 years at Google as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Death of the IDE? as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Personal Software: The Unbundling of the Programmer? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Code Nobody Reads as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Long-Running Agents as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Modern Browsers Work as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The reality of AI-Assisted software engineering productivity as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Coding for the Future Agentic World as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Vibe Coding is not an excuse for low-quality work as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Addy Osmani: Beyond the 70%: Maximizing the human 30% of AI-assisted coding as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Use Cline for AI Engineering as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Agentic Verification as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted V0, Bolt, and Lovable Compared as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Loop Engineering as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The 80% Problem in Agentic Coding – Addy Osmani as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Code Review in the Age of AI as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
