An ode to houseplant programming (2025)(hannahilea.com) |
An ode to houseplant programming (2025)(hannahilea.com) |
However, the term reminded me of a memorable interaction I had many decades ago with an old woman who wanted to write a program in x86 Asm to manage various aspects of the plants in her garden. (She did succeed at doing so.)
"Utilities" doesn't indicate the audience or the intended longevity of use of the tool like "houseplant" and "bouquet" do.
Both indicate they are built for personal use cases, suggesting potentially low reusability. The longevity of "houseplant" suggests it's intended for ongoing use, while "bouquet" suggests a limited use tool.
With work, either could be made reusable for others, but I think it's implied that the scope is an edge case or uncommon case that likely only applies to its creator or a very limited audience.
I see value in the terms, but these terms may themselves be houseplant terms, not sure if general adoption is useful to someone not building houseplant software, they are mostly hobbiest terms by definition.
A powerful editor/IDE makes it ... not the worst programming experience in the world.
And since it's "so detailed" it's pretty easy to understand and explain, unlike higher-level languages that "do everything for you".
"Home-cooked apps" is still my preferred phrase. Personal software and subsistence development are also good terms.
Their irl counterparts at the university make me think it must be envy, the same as with AI art: they were never good programmers but have always envied the their prestige; and using this new wonderful machine, they can now live out their fantasy at the expense of others. For others it's just nihilism: why not cheat through your entire higher ed if it's now entirely possible?
But many AI-boosters here on HN were once respected programmers, so what else can it be? Fatigue setting in with age, exacerbated by too many levels of indirection in modern software, AI becoming a crutch to avoid noticing you're slowing down?
This reminds me of various programs I've made to improve the quality of my digital life. Humble little things that I didn't want to build, addressing minor problems that could be mostly solved by other means, but nevertheless appeared on my mental wish list often enough that I eventually dedicated some time to creating them.
These tools do exactly what I need, all day, every day, quietly making things more pleasant than they would be otherwise. With them, I feel at home.
The biggest ROI is fulfilling my childhood dream of having a ton of my favourites rare plants. Then I sell my extra ones on my webshop, but it doesn't make that much money as I am not focusing on expensive varieties, just the ones I like.
You can check out plants in jars on YouTube, or use a LLM to get into it. Some LLMs might not want to answer you because they think you're trying to do something dangerous... Claude has been flagging a lot of my questions.
I think broadly speaking, we need less software that's higher quality. Commercially at least, LLM's seem to be creating more lower quality software. Less software but much higher quality, and then let the gaps be filled in by houseplant programming. Instead we get half-baked vibe coded Cloudflare-isk slop being promoted, or CEO's of saas-slop providers salivating at the chance to fire half of their workforce.
I want to see more houseplants being posted here, LLM generated or not. At least they would tend to have more care and love put into them.