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Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

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Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#191

Post by moron4hire »

Pannoniae wrote: post #177
moron4hire wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Encouraging people to understand the layer of abstractions they're building on is helpful, doesn't matter if they do it by hand or with clankers. But we know that long term use of LLMs does not lead to better understanding, it leads to reliance on the LLM for the person to be able to function at their job.

You also depend on {computers, the internet, electricity, groceries, etc.}, that's not the discriminating factor.... the question is, are you actually better at your job using it, and are you stunting your own growth? I'm not claiming to have a definite answer to either, but I think the right question to ask is - are you going to benefit from using it in the long run? If yes, carry on, if no, re-evaluate what you're…

Early in my career, I had a consulting job where the client wanted me to work on their system using their tools. They had nothing and would not provide anything. No compilers, no runtimes, nothing but a regular, run of the mill, desktop office workstation. Instead of performing the task in Visual Studio with .NET like we had planned, I did it in Excel with VBA macros.

If you come to rely on specific tools such that you can't do your job without them, you're no longer doing the job you think you're doing, you're now just a tool operator. If I don't have a computer of some kind, I'm not writing software, I'm just a manager. If my team can't work because GitHub is down, then we've done a bad job of being software developers.

The experience taught me that there are two kinds of tools: those that are necessary and those that are nice to have. Yes, that job sucked, and yes, I quit that job, but more because they refused to pay me the overtime I needed to get it done with such crappy tools.

I had another job where we were one client of many on site with a vendor for a training event and the vendor couldn't get a system configured correctly for our cohort to continue on. Part of the problem was their configuration system was garbage, very easy to get wrong, very time consuming to manually edit. While they were dicking around with throwing edits against the wall, I wrote an HTML page with JavaScript to make a UI to edit the data in an much more natural way and then generate the config file. It took 10 minutes and saved us hours of waiting so that we could continue on with the training. Perhaps the takeaway from that experience was that Valve's engineers write shitty config systems. All I know is we got the training event done and I walked away with a piece of paper that said I was now a Certified Hardware Vendor, which we then used to sell more contracts on our own.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#192

Post by TZubiri »

rdevilla wrote: post #67

Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. Today, I just think, "how long would LLMs have taken to write this?" I mourn the death of a human artform.

But if it was written with an LLM, then it's not really written in assembly.

Would we have considered writing a server in C writing it in assembly? No.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#193

Post by mathgladiator »

rdevilla wrote: post #67

Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. Today, I just think, "how long would LLMs have taken to write this?" I mourn the death of a human artform.

> I mourn the death of a human artform

Well, look at this way, the needs of commerce are going to solve the conflict between practical and the beautiful. I think those of that value the beautiful aspects of coding will find new avenues of expression. For example, I'm about to get back into C programming to build a play.date game engine for an MMO.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#195

Post by saulpw »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #154
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far more exciting than sad. Got an idea that you'd need assembly language for - now you can do it instead of..... never doing it because it would have been impossible for you in any practical way. Look to the positive instead of lamenting something that never would have happened. It's unbelievably exciting that you can now program a computer virtually without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.

You won’t be able to enjoy your free time playing with computers if anthropic et al make you jobless. The “you” doesn’t necessarily refer to you. Im addressing 90% of the developers out there. We love playing around technology… but I doubt we will be thinking the same once we become unemployable. But here we are, having fun with the tools of companies that want to finish us. How ironic

Fiddling while our home burns has been a beloved pasttime for many people, from emperors to passengers on ocean liners to prisoners in camps. What else is there to do anyway? Sometimes history must take its course before humanity as a whole recognizes its folly.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#196

Post by estebarb »

menzoic wrote: post #88
estebarb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has always been possible to do it. LLMs are not a particular enabler for that. The difference is that now it is worthless: there is no learning, no person caring about the result, nothing aspirational for the public to look towards... we used to enjoy those challenges, used to be proud of solving complex problems... now? Yeah, whatever, execute execute commit push, let another LLM "review" and call it a day.

The difference is not that it’s “worthless”. The difference is that now it’s “practical” to implement given the low effort. I wouldn’t be sad about defeating lower complexity challenges. There are always higher complexity challenges that arise once we start operating in a world when you can do more. The bar raises.

No, increasing the offer of something decreases its value, always. Do not necessarily increases its demand. That is basic economic rule. See that I use "value", not "cost". The distinction matters.

Yesterday I went to a bookstore: saw an interesting book cover then I thought "ah, looks like AI"... all excitement went away. There won't be a "new complexity frontier" for artists that used to draw book covers. Or writers, actors, writers, etc.

AI is currently not enabling any use case which previously was "too hard". It is just reducing the value of stuff by increasing the offer and making people delulu about what they can achieve without proper knowledge.

Making good stuff requires paying attention to a lot of details. Even "simple" stuff can become incredible complex once you actually learn about how it must be done. Most of what we humans do is working on that space, not chasing projects Manhattans.

What do we get if population is disconnected of the true complexity of creating stuff? Perceived value decreases and if everything is perceived equally bad people will stop caring about quality. That is why fascism likes uneducated people.

So, that is about the AI contribution to "value" itself.

Now, is it true that AI will allow us to create more complex stuff that is not practical now? I would strongly disagree. The reason is Kolmogorov complexity: it is not possible to find the shortest program that describes a task. Describing it with natural language will not magically give us permission to avoid having to describe that complexity. What is the point of switching from C to English, if I still have to specify every little detail in a much ambiguous and verbose language? Programming languages are not the challenge, they are the solution to the problem of having to specify complex tasks in a reproducible way.

Now gathering everything together: that is why I think that generative AI makes things worthless: value reduction, complexity perception reduction (which reduces value), a population ignorant of the complexity will choose subpar options because "they are all the same garbage" and we will not get any superior engineering capability anyway.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#198

Post by appreciatorBus »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #154
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far more exciting than sad. Got an idea that you'd need assembly language for - now you can do it instead of..... never doing it because it would have been impossible for you in any practical way. Look to the positive instead of lamenting something that never would have happened. It's unbelievably exciting that you can now program a computer virtually without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.

You won’t be able to enjoy your free time playing with computers if anthropic et al make you jobless. The “you” doesn’t necessarily refer to you. Im addressing 90% of the developers out there. We love playing around technology… but I doubt we will be thinking the same once we become unemployable. But here we are, having fun with the tools of companies that want to finish us. How ironic

This is silly.

While I work in IT today, that wasn’t always true. I am certain I spent more free time playing with computers when my work did not involve computers at all. While I enjoy working with computers at a variety of different levels, when I do it all day, I don’t typically wanna do it when I get home. If Anthropic means there are no more IT jobs, software jobs, etc. etc. etc. (which I think is highly unlikely) then I guess I will have to do a non-tech job just like 99% of the other human beings. If that comes to pass,I expect in my spare time I will suddenly reacquire a love for tinkering with computers.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#199

Post by risyachka »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #71
rdevilla wrote: post #67

Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. Today, I just think, "how long would LLMs have taken to write this?" I mourn the death of a human artform.

It's far more exciting than sad. Got an idea that you'd need assembly language for - now you can do it instead of..... never doing it because it would have been impossible for you in any practical way. Look to the positive instead of lamenting something that never would have happened. It's unbelievably exciting that you can now program a computer virtually without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.

the biggest issue with llms is that they make those who have no idea what they are doing seem like they know something.

>> without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.

yeah its nice though this in 100% of cases results of software of even lower quality we had before.

so hard to tell where is the win here. the fact that you can generate some code does not make it a win, just a curious fact.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#200

Post by risyachka »

_factor wrote: post #144
rdevilla wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is the death of the celebration of excellence and technical mastery. Once insurmountable challenges are now trivial to implement with, as you say, "low effort." For those who were attracted to computing by the grind and the grand narrative that you, too, with sufficient effort, discipline, and merit, could become a revered craftsman, LLMs trivialize an entire lifetime of practice. I can't think of anything…

Did hammers obviate the technical mastery of finding a suitable rock? Or did they elevate the definition of “technical mastery”?

llms are nothing like hammers or other tools.

They are factories that product goods on a whim. There is nothing to compare them to as we never had anything like that. This is not industrial revolution this is obliteration of work at its core.

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