[HN Gopher] An ode to houseplant programming (2025)
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An ode to houseplant programming (2025)
Author : evakhoury
Score : 136 points
Date : 2026-02-27 15:19 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hannahilea.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hannahilea.com)
| ku1ik wrote:
| This is such a lovely article. It's one of the few things posted
| to HN these days that actually feels human.
| kubb wrote:
| I also feel this way. It's a breath of fresh air. I love the
| Blomsterfonstret illustration too.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| Yeah this place has been depressing lately. The hope is that AI
| could be used to automate the parts of our lives that bring us
| no joy or growth and help us become fully actualised human
| beings, but instead it seems like it's just used as a tool to
| boost profits while making the world a worse place.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| As someone said, "Machines were supposed to rid us of tedious
| work. Instead they write poetry and create art, and we fill
| captchas to prove to them that we are human"
| zikduruqe wrote:
| I prefer a quote from Dune - "Once men turned their
| thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set
| them free. But that only permitted other men with machines
| to enslave them."
| slopinthebag wrote:
| Yeah, something like "I want AI to do my laundry and clean
| my house so I have more time to write and create art.
| Instead the AI writes and generates art so I have more time
| to clean my house and do laundry."
| pona-a wrote:
| It's the denigration of any and all intellectual pursuits
| that gets me. It's the myopic lead the blind, in a race to
| empty their brain fastest before the singularity can rupture
| them into the mainframe heaven.
|
| 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?
| IanCal wrote:
| Or it's just a useful tool that lets me build more stuff
| and focus on what I'm more interested in, and can use it to
| learn.
| 1stub wrote:
| AI becomes problematic when its exceeds the role of a
| tool.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| It can be a useful tool to do all that, that's what I use
| it for. Unfortunately a lot of AI boosters have the sfba
| move fast and break things mentality and that leads to
| all sorts of slop being pushed.
|
| 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| Not sure we need another term for this, as "utilities" has been
| the accepted term for various one-off programs that do
| miscellaneous things, and of which power-users will tend to have
| a rather large collection of.
|
| 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.)
| yuppiepuppie wrote:
| I like the new term which distinguishes it from "utilities"
| that are personal tools used for programming it self.
| midnitewarrior wrote:
| "Utilities" is a generic term suggesting it is small,
| potentially reusable, purpose-limited, and used to simplify a
| task.
|
| "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.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| _userscripts_
| wonger_ wrote:
| Sometimes utilities can be production-grade, tho, so I don't
| think that captures the nonchalance the author was looking for.
|
| "Home-cooked apps" is still my preferred phrase. Personal
| software and subsistence development are also good terms.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Home-cooked doesn't sound right. The term Handmade has a fair
| bit of usage for this already and has a lot less semantic
| friction in my head. Homemade isn't bad either, if you really
| like the cooking analogy.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| I think Maggie uses home-cooked here and it works for me
| because of the extended analogy
|
| https://maggieappleton.com/home-cooked-software
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "subsistence development", to me, sounds like "doing menial
| dev tasks in order to earn enough $ to survive"
| bombcar wrote:
| I was surprised when I actually dabbled in x86 ASM (in the
| guise of MASM which arguably is a higher-level language than
| direct ASM) with BIOS and DOS interrupts as functions - it's
| quite close to C and not at all difficult - just tedious.
|
| 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".
| phito wrote:
| I love it. I do plant tissue culture as hobby and really see
| plants as the living systems that they are.
| contingencies wrote:
| Cool, can you provide some more info on how you got in to this,
| recommended dabbling strategy and what sort of ROI you're
| getting from time invested? I have been getting in to botany
| pretty heavily already.
| amelius wrote:
| I prefer:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| While interesting, that seems unrelated. A software equivalent
| might be turning an agent loose on a codebase unrestricted and
| seeing what it comes up with (which is followed by cleaning up
| the mess, analogous to the rounds of outcrossing that follow
| irradiation and selection).
| skyberrys wrote:
| The article has a bonus cat video so I highly recommend it. I
| like the houseplant metaphor, but I don't see how the author is
| tending to the programs like the plants. The plants are getting
| regular care, do the one of programs?
| Voklen wrote:
| I love this, although I tend to use the "Home-cooked meal"
| analogy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38877423
| foresto wrote:
| > A happy home: I love having both plants and homemade projects
| in my living space.
|
| 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.
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(page generated 2026-03-01 23:01 UTC)