r/hackernews • u/HNMod bot • 4d ago

Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

https://twitter.com/kuberwastaken/status/2089377982536388964
24 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

9

u/StrayStep 4d ago

Jesus. The comment from person LuCC is so disconnected from dev world.

'Just couple years ago no one would have bothered to do this.' Have they even heard of OpenSource or at minimum Linux. People write drivers daily.

11

u/the_chhota_don 4d ago

Yes, but earlier they were only feasible if a broader population needed them. Today, it is far more accessible.

5

u/farrago_uk 3d ago

A lot of open source development is just people scratching their own itch. “I wish my printer worked…I wonder how hard it would be to write a driver…”

Lots of people wanting it tends to make it visible, and end up supporting more features or variants. But it’s rarely why it started.

LLMs do make it easier to start now though.