Shiny Object Syndrome

duke_sam | 22 hours ago

An aspect of this I find interesting is that previously effort was a reasonably good barrier to making something new. If a feature/library existed someone cared enough to put the work in to make it exist.

Now it’s just a question of tokens. The presentation/feature list is no sign of effort or caring. So we get limitless new shiny things to try and filter through

Sharlin | 22 hours ago

It’s possibly a good thing in disguise. Maybe it will make software dev finally more inclined to focus on tested and true technologies rather than chasing trendy novelty stuff.

(Oh, who am I kidding, it’s AI that do tech decisions now and they choose whatever stuff that’s overrepresented in their training data, or just NIH stuff, which has inexplicably become a virtue, like measuring progress by lines of code spent has become. )

drawfloat | 21 hours ago

Pretty sure bringing up tokens immediately is itself an example of this.

add-sub-mul-div | 18 hours ago

It's the Eternal September of open source software projects.

codeulike | 22 hours ago

This is just a rebranding of novelty bias to make it seem like a new idea

rwoerz | 22 hours ago

Novelty bias is soooo 2025

jareklupinski | 21 hours ago

cant wait till fads are retro again

tough | 22 hours ago

There's a meta-recursion there that's kinda funny innit

jere | 20 hours ago

Good one.

kristianp | 11 hours ago

Yes, Should probably be a sub-section or a single sentence in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_bias

bmitch3020 | 10 hours ago

Not just making it seem like a new idea, but a shiny and trendy one.

mcphage | 22 hours ago

In boardgame communities, it’s called “Cult of the New”.

gspr | 21 hours ago

I wonder if this has any relevance at all to a bunch of new stuff that people on HN seem very obsessed over these days.

rf15 | 20 hours ago

No no, this is a genuinely new and unrelated thing few people have seen so far.

Ozzie_osman | 21 hours ago

I call it Toddler Soccer Syndrome. Ball's over there? Let's all chase it. Oh, moved over here now? Everyone run the other way.

rf15 | 20 hours ago

I know it as dogs-with-ball syndrome, and rather used that analogy to teach my son what not to do when learning to play football.

venning | 21 hours ago

The earliest reference on Wikipedia is 2011, but I was saying "Shiny Object Syndrome" and even specifically abbreviating it "SOS" by at least 2005.

I know that I first heard it from somewhere else, but I do not remember where. I'm pretty sure it was a TV show.

Does any one remember where it originated from?

nomel | 13 hours ago

And its strategic use through "nerd sniping".

xandrius | 20 hours ago

Why is such a small article being upvoted? It's basically just a definition page.

d4v3 | 20 hours ago

"Shiny object syndrome is the situation ..."

'The situation'? Can't help but feel this is very imprecise and unserious language.

onemoresoop | 19 hours ago

Like Magpie developers? It may be somewhat humorous but that’s what these analogies look like from the outside. People chasing new things or trends for its own sake is a thing.

Dilettante_ | 19 hours ago

They're just letting anyone make a Wikipedia page these days huh

zzunkie | 19 hours ago

If anything, there's so much new stuff these days that I don't even get the FOMO to try it all.. building it myself is easy too.