Let’s wait how affordable, available and good AI is when the companies turn to profit maximization and enshittification begins
cachius•Mar 20, 2026
You can go local now with qwen 3.5 9B Q4 powering hermes agent at 35 to 50 tok/s with 99 percent tool call success rate on a used RTX 3060 for the price of two months of ChatGPT Pro and never bother. https://xcancel.com/sudoingX/status/2033020823846674546#m
Nope, if nobody trains the models on new data you have at some point an outdated model.
Imagine Qwen 3.5 created in the 1990s and then use it for today web or desktop development.
And is the problem solved that training AI with AI code makes the AI worse? If not the "it only gets better" claim is questionable.
autoexec•Mar 20, 2026
> Nope, if nobody trains the models on new data you have at some point an outdated model.
As people train the models on new data they'll be increasingly training on AI output including hallucinations and slop. More garbage in means even more garbage out and the cycle will continue as "updated" models decline in quality.
m3galinux•Mar 20, 2026
Not so useless. In my experience LLMs are about 50/50 on making a regex that actually works and covers the cases you asked it for. Even less when you get into cases needing advanced features like backreferences and lookahead.
littlekey•Mar 20, 2026
Anecdotal data point, writing and maintaining regex is still a core part of my job. Not useless at all for me :)
HanClinto•Mar 20, 2026
Nice game!
We made a similar game several years ago for the Pyweek game competition, but there wasn't the fun "letter invaders" style that this one has.
Might be good to limit some of the special operators to give more focus -- otherwise the early levels are a bit too solvable with ".*"
ks2048•Mar 20, 2026
Every vibe coded site is too dark and the text is too small.
progbits•Mar 20, 2026
They all have this rounded box design as well. I wonder where that came from, I don't think it was a predominant style before.
mrkramer•Mar 20, 2026
I vibe code web apps with Google's Gemini and I think it actually mimics Google's UI and UX because I see similarities between my vibe coded web apps and Google's web apps.
progbits•Mar 20, 2026
But that's a different style from the these colorful border rounded boxes that I think Claude in particular loves to produce.
mdp•Mar 20, 2026
This is fair, although I ask for it to be dark themed to match what I think was the style of typing game I remember growing up with (it's been a while). Bumped up the font though.
btilly•Mar 20, 2026
My top complaint is that if I've successfully used a pattern, I want my text removed. I keep forgetting to backspace a bunch, then get frustrated that my pattern isn't working.
Other than that, great game!
xnorswap•Mar 20, 2026
Next time please ask it to respect system dark/light mode preference, it's trivial to do, especially for an LLM which can spin up light/dark alternatives easily.
NooneAtAll3•Mar 20, 2026
no
considering free windows being light theme only, it should be a button, not a "system default"
CamperBob2•Mar 20, 2026
That's fine, too. Either way, give the user the choice.
xnorswap•Mar 20, 2026
There should be a button too, but it's simple to add a line so that it also defaults to any provided preference.
zamadatix•Mar 20, 2026
By "free windows" do you just mean an unactivated copy of Windows? That doesn't prevent the user from configuring their preference in the browser itself.
gdcbe•Mar 20, 2026
… is that even legal to do for microsoft? Are there no requirements to adhere to certain standards? Would have thought that is part of it.
darkstar999•Mar 20, 2026
What evidence do you have that this is vibe coded?
flexagoon•Mar 20, 2026
Because it looks exactly the same and feels as janky as 99% of vibecoded web apps
ks2048•Mar 20, 2026
Just based on vibes.
christoph-heiss•Mar 20, 2026
And all the text is grey-on-grey and basically unreadable. Not to even mention accessibility.
flykespice•Mar 20, 2026
Every vibecoded site have this same dark look with shining hue-gradient borders, can't wait for the future the entire web be filled with this generic look
PurpleRamen•Mar 20, 2026
Maybe because it 1337 hackerman-style, or something.
mchaver•Mar 20, 2026
I could envision the style even before clicking on the site.
lofaszvanitt•Mar 20, 2026
And not playtested at all :D
brew-hacker•Mar 20, 2026
Fun interactive game!
SilentM68•Mar 20, 2026
Cool idea! I shall give it a try :)
freedomben•Mar 20, 2026
Wow really cool! Genuinely fun, and educational at the same time.
One usability request: after firing a regex, could the text box be cleared? It's not hard to hit Ctrl+A and start typing again, but it does add a bit of friction. (I can send a PR)
This looks like something I would vibe code with Google's Gemini. Interesting concept.
JanisErdmanis•Mar 20, 2026
This is really funny ;D Gives Tetris vibes and is executed beautifully.
1-more•Mar 20, 2026
I don't understand the first "combat" level. There's no real defining pattern separating the good from bad hex strings, so it's just a typing speed contest to type all the enemy patterns, right? What am I missing?
Andoryuuta•Mar 20, 2026
As far as I can tell, the first combat level enemies all start with "ALERT-" and have exactly 3 digits.
1-more•Mar 20, 2026
sorry, second combat level. It's all 6 digit hex color strings, some good some bad.
Andoryuuta•Mar 20, 2026
Ah, I see. Yeah, that one definitely took me multiple attempts to see what it wanted.
I believe that the "enemies":
1. Must start with "#"
2. Must be exactly 6 hex digits
3. Must be lowercase
1-more•Mar 20, 2026
Ohhhhh I swore there were friendlies with lowercase too! Thank you!!
schiem•Mar 20, 2026
There are, just not lowercase characters that are valid hex.
joshribakoff•Mar 20, 2026
I cant even read this because most of the text is outside my phones viewport. Please test your stuff before posting it here.
NooneAtAll3•Mar 20, 2026
I wish it wasn't time-limited...
lasgawe•Mar 20, 2026
Haha, this is nice. I'm bad at regex most of the time. Playing this felt like when I first switched from Visual Studio to Vim. it’s a bit of a learning curve. It’s an interactive game btw
sublinear•Mar 20, 2026
The page width is not responsive and unusable on mobile
UltraSane•Mar 20, 2026
cool idea but it needs to get slower as the levels get harder
pimlottc•Mar 20, 2026
The colors are difficult for colorblind people. Orange/green is difficult already, and then green turns into red depending on the state? Ugh. Looks fun but unplayable for me.
16 Comments
https://mdp.github.io/2026/03/17/the-kids-are-alright-and-th...
Let’s wait how affordable, available and good AI is when the companies turn to profit maximization and enshittification begins
This is the worst local AI will ever be. It only gets better from here. https://xcancel.com/sudoingX/status/2033959603944493192#m
Imagine Qwen 3.5 created in the 1990s and then use it for today web or desktop development.
And is the problem solved that training AI with AI code makes the AI worse? If not the "it only gets better" claim is questionable.
As people train the models on new data they'll be increasingly training on AI output including hallucinations and slop. More garbage in means even more garbage out and the cycle will continue as "updated" models decline in quality.
We made a similar game several years ago for the Pyweek game competition, but there wasn't the fun "letter invaders" style that this one has.
https://pyweek.org/e/RegExExpress/
I really like your implementation!
Might be good to limit some of the special operators to give more focus -- otherwise the early levels are a bit too solvable with ".*"
Other than that, great game!
considering free windows being light theme only, it should be a button, not a "system default"
One usability request: after firing a regex, could the text box be cleared? It's not hard to hit Ctrl+A and start typing again, but it does add a bit of friction. (I can send a PR)
I believe that the "enemies":
1. Must start with "#"
2. Must be exactly 6 hex digits
3. Must be lowercase