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Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

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Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#51

Post by ares623 »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #43
golemotron wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it this way. The carver doesn't have to grow the tree. Using an LLM for coding is a lot like being a carver. You can take broad or small strokes and discard what you don't like.

> Using an LLM for coding is a lot like being a carver. It’s nothing like being a carver. It’s like being a director; “Once more! With feeling!”. “Perfect, brilliant, just one more take, and I want you to consider…” A sculptor shapes with their hands, and there is pleasure in that. A director shapes with someone else’s hands.

It's like being a master, really. You're getting output from something that can't say no and that was built from the works of millions of unknowing and unconsenting contributors.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#52

Post by habinero »

brap wrote: post #23

Great vision for 2030. But as for today, have we all just collectively decided to pretend that the LLMs we have are capable of writing good software? I use LLMs a lot in my workflow, I probably spend a whole day per week learning and fiddling with new tools, techniques, etc. and trying to integrate them in all sorts of ways. Been at it for about a year and a half, mainly because I’m intrigued. I’m sorry but it still…

Most of them are, yeah. There are a lot of Idea Guys on here, who are in love with the idea that they no longer need effort or skills to Create Their Vision. If they can just prompt hard enough, success will come rolling in.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#53

Post by bgwalter »

Before LLMs, “perfect software” was largely a myth.

We know, your blog is the first static webpage in existence.

Third, it brings back autonomy.

This is the new talking point. Musk claims that cars that are always connected provide "autonomy", vibe coders claim that the stolen code distributed by Anthropic provides "autonomy".

War is peace, freedom is slavery.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#54

Post by leonflexo »

I only read this because while messing around with learning some basic VPS and NGINX, I used Claude to spin up some quick frontends. One ended up being a geocities hackernews clone. Then while getting some basic process and terminal experience, I piped into Codex CLI to generate a summary modal to my visual liking. All of that to say that while I could have done it on my own, I likely wouldn't have because it allowed me a low friction path to implementing the bits that weren't crucial for what I was trying to learn.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#55

Post by eszed »

zingar wrote: post #46
andy99 wrote: post #34

I guess software is going to be like furniture - there was some (possibly imagined) period where it was very well made and bought for the long term, and (obvious where this is going) now there’s lots of ikea crap that is easy and cheap but doesn’t survive a move or getting water spilled on it, and is essentially Formica over cardboard. Overall both are net positives, I have some nice wood furniture and also a $7 Lack…

I have the same furniture analogy in mind. If we imagine that more people have more agency when it comes to extending software, what does the software equivalent of repair look like? What does dumpster diving or a second hand software store look like?

Cloning and extending someone's long-abandoned github project?

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#56

Post by bitwize »

Before LLMs, software wasn't just some artifact like a painting, a ladder, or a bloviating Facebook post—something ordinary humans made to suit their own purposes. It could only be made by the mutant lizard people from space who walk among us, wearing human skins, yet somehow having the innate ability to program. But by good old fashioned human ingenuity and manipulation tactics (aka marketing), we managed to trick the lizard people into building LLMs! Think of an LLM as an electronic genie that has, among other abilities, the lizard person's ability to write computer programs—and puts that power in the hands of ordinary human beings like you! Finally, after eight decades of computers—infernal machines built by the lizard people to enslave us all—the computer now does exactly what you want!

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#57

Post by Antibabelic »

dotancohen wrote: post #27
analogpixel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that most of the time, programming is just procrastination, and having the LLM there breaks through that procrastination and lets me focus on the idea I was thinking on without going into the weeds. A lot of the time, the LLM outputs the code, I test my idea, and realize I really don't care or the idea wasn't that great, and now I can move on to something else.

I'm now using an LLM to write a voice note organisation application that I have been dreaming about for two decades. I did vibe code the first version. It runs, but it is utterly unmaintainable. I'm now rewriting it using the LLM as if it were a junior or outsourced programmer (not a developer, that remains my job) and I go over every line of application code. I love it, I'm pushing out decent quality code and very f…

> I would have never gotten to this stage of my dream project without AI tooling.

Why not? People have been writing successful personal projects without LLMs for years.

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#58

Post by MostlyStable »

Of all the topics to judge LLM use, this seems the least appropriate. This is about people making software for themselves and no one else. Your opinion on the quality of their software is entirely beside the point. No one is ever going to force you to use an LLM to make personal software. And no one is ever going to force you to use LLM-generated software that was explicitely made and intended to be used only by the one person.

There are a lot of contexts where I can understand arguing against LLM use (even in cases where I might not entirely agree, I can understand the objection), but this is not one of them.

Don't think this will improve your life? Great, don't do it. But this is also the most classic case of "don't yuck other people's yum". If someone tells you they used an LLM to make some piece of software for themselves and they like it or that it improved some aspect of their life or workflow, what on earth is gained by trying to convince them that no, actually, it's not good and isn't improving their lives and is in fact garbage?

Re: Perfect Software – Software for an Audience of One

#59

Post by saagarjha »

Lyngbakr wrote: post #21

I was nodding along enthusiastically right up until LLMs and that point we sharply diverge. For me, part of creating "perfect" software is that I am very much the one crafting the software. I'm learning while creating, but I find such learning is greatly diminished when I outsource building to AI. It's certainly harder and perhaps my software is worse, but for me the sense of achievement is also much greater.

Sometimes it’s nice to have other people cook you a tasty meal.
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