Don't Take the Black Pill - Andrew Kelley | SSW 2026
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters share it as a motivating antidote to burnout and despair about AI and enshittification, and as a window into Kelley's philosophy of agency and his stance on AI in software.
Recommended by 3 people across 2 different months, 2026 to 2026.
What it is
Zig creator Andrew Kelley gives a conference talk at Software Should Work 2026 arguing against technological fatalism. He applies systems thinking to how software fits into society, envisions an alternative future, and lays out concrete steps to move toward it, drawing on his personal story of leaving a religious background.
What people said
Strong rec boristsr · 2026-10 · Hacker News · on “I wish you the best in the Offline”
Reading this article I couldn't help but think of a fantastic talk I found quite motivating by Andrew Kelley, Don't Take The Black Pill. In it he talks about staying in the game, keeping strong voices advocating for good and positive change, and how stepping back, while a valid protection mechanism concedes the victory to whatever it is that's exhausting us. [this video]
Recommends jmloop · 2026-08 · Hacker News · on “Ask HN: Does anyone else feel like nothing matters anymore?”
Keep learning things, create, do it because you like it not because you want to sell it. Think of all the books, music and movies produced before AI, they are still there waiting for us to enjoy. Can you imagine a world where AI is the only source of truth? Can you imagine the level of bias and manipulation that beast can have? Let's keep playing without cheats. === "Don't Take the Black Pill - Andrew Kelley | SSW 2026" Abstract: In our modern world, it's easy to feel like things are careening out of control; that the future is happening to us while we take a back seat... and all we can do is lie down and rot. [this video]
Recommends udbhavs · 2026-08 · Hacker News · on “Bun 1.4”
Hate to comment more on the drama, but it's only after watching Andrew Kelley's talk at Software Should Work [1] that I realized how philosophically different he is from Jarred and the broader SF AI/VC sphere. Here he is in a conference talking about agency, enshittification, and learning to deprogram from a deeply religious background and then using that experience of internal questioning to define his relationship with computers. And somehow, the programming language he made (that currently bans AI contributions outright) ended up being instrumental for a tool that's in the center of the whole craze, and doing Tony Hawk 900 aerial spins with agentic AI software rewrites under a frontier la
Cites keinzirp · 2026-07 · Hacker News · on “Don't Take the Black Pill [video]”
Does anyone know what the "discord alternative" is that Andrew says he's working on at the end[0] of the video? [0]: [this video]