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Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

writings.hongminhee.org

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Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#41

Post by airbreather »

dugite-code wrote: post #38
burntoutgray wrote: post #24

To use an analogy, back in the days of film cameras and before 1 hour labs, the "craftsman" photographer would carefully frame the shot, carefully setting the exposure, aperture and focus. The most meticulous would take notes in a notebook. There were only 36 frames to a roll of film and all going well, the photographer had to wait a couple of days to get back the proof sheet. Those were the days when expert photogra…

> These days, everybody is an expert photographer If that were true there would be no wedding photographer's or any sales of high end DSLR's. The barrier of entry may have fallen but the need for real experts and tools still exists. I expect AI's will cause a similar shift, lower barrier to entry but still requiring the hand of the expert in critical situations.

Just wait long enough

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#42

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

4162-123w wrote: post #28

These kind of inevitability articles always citing the same bloggers are just there to support AI. They never address: - Real developers like Rob Pike who hate AI. - The IP theft that powers the models. - The actual useful output of LLMs that is very low. - The fact that 99.9999% of useful software was produced before AI. - The fact that "nostalgic developers" are not interested in "writing" code, but understanding a…

IDK… I don’t care.

I think there is an unheard number of people that think vibe coding is fucking stupid and knows it doesn’t work. While also being really thankful for the small task automation that AI nails every single time.

Why does it have to be a world changing life altering experience? Why can’t I just like have a really helpful rubber duck that will find all the missing references or clean up merge issues for me?

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#43

Post by galangalalgol »

padolsey wrote: post #35

There is indeed a painful dissonance here. I like this new world, but feel sorrow for the loss of something. I try to remember how empowering AI is. It is already allowing millions of people to finally use the devices they've been sitting in front of all these years. No longer do they have to feel constrained by software creators who have made choices for them. Now it is their tool through-and-through, and they can c…

That really is a great thing. I do wonder at the segment of the population that from the 70s to today that sculpted their brain to think like a von Neumann machine. What will be lost when the last of us passes. It will likely be viewed as an oddity by future generations and people will try to replicate it as a hobby. But many of us began shortly after learning a primary human language, and that degree of specialization isn't something a hobby can reproduce.

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#44

Post by padolsey »

Insanity wrote: post #37
padolsey wrote: post #35

There is indeed a painful dissonance here. I like this new world, but feel sorrow for the loss of something. I try to remember how empowering AI is. It is already allowing millions of people to finally use the devices they've been sitting in front of all these years. No longer do they have to feel constrained by software creators who have made choices for them. Now it is their tool through-and-through, and they can c…

I disagree. There's definitely _some_ who will use these tools to build systems for themselves. But do you think the chef who's been pulling insane hours in the restaurant wants to come home and build his own software? Or the teacher who just had to deal with an annoying classroom all day? People want software that just works, they'll pay for it, they don't want to use their computers to build their own software. Tha…

Does it have to be mutually exclusive? On-the-fly software does not destroy software. Gatekeeping software creation does not mean shoving the existing creators out, it just means creating a larger space that others can occupy, like when 'real' programmers had to slowly permit 'script kiddies' into their spaces. All feels a bit 'old guard' vs 'new guard'.

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#45

Post by shigawire »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #42
4162-123w wrote: post #28

These kind of inevitability articles always citing the same bloggers are just there to support AI. They never address: - Real developers like Rob Pike who hate AI. - The IP theft that powers the models. - The actual useful output of LLMs that is very low. - The fact that 99.9999% of useful software was produced before AI. - The fact that "nostalgic developers" are not interested in "writing" code, but understanding a…

IDK… I don’t care. I think there is an unheard number of people that think vibe coding is fucking stupid and knows it doesn’t work. While also being really thankful for the small task automation that AI nails every single time. Why does it have to be a world changing life altering experience? Why can’t I just like have a really helpful rubber duck that will find all the missing references or clean up merge issues for…

> Why does it have to be a world changing life altering experience?

Because the global economy has been wagered on this

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#46

Post by Paracompact »

aeon_ai wrote: post #40
4162-123w wrote: post #28

These kind of inevitability articles always citing the same bloggers are just there to support AI. They never address: - Real developers like Rob Pike who hate AI. - The IP theft that powers the models. - The actual useful output of LLMs that is very low. - The fact that 99.9999% of useful software was produced before AI. - The fact that "nostalgic developers" are not interested in "writing" code, but understanding a…

New accounts created to shovel a narrative of neo-luddite nonsense into the discourse without addressing a single point with substantiation. "IP Theft" is a loaded term that has already been determined to be unfounded in US law. Alsup stated that models were one of the most transformative uses of content he may ever see in his lifetime, and deemed it fair use. No matter how you slice it, this technology and capabilit…

Apologies to the user if they aren't an alt and this is just their genuine first post, but: We really ought to delegitimize the whole "creating alts to post unpopular opinions" trend. I know HN is very privacy-centric, but it just seems wrong to me when someone isn't willing to stake their reputation on (what I charitably assume are) genuinely held controversial opinions.

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#47

Post by iwontberude »

The author conflates two paradigms: The first is one of a child learning BASIC not for beauty but for making things happen on the screen. The second is an adult producing software not because he enjoys the act, challenge and workflow, but for shipping software.

I don’t see any difference between the child learning BASIC for its beauty and the chase to make things happen on the screen. Secondly, there is a very profound difference between a child creating and an adult creating for profit. The profit motive changes everything, even for someone “doing it for the love of it.”

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#48

Post by padolsey »

d--b wrote: post #36

It’s called karma? We, software developers, as a profession took over countless crafts. It started with people doing calculations by hand, then moved on to people typing on typewriters and continued from there. People used to edit films with scissors and scotch tape. People used to place lead fonts on a matrix to print news articles. Databases used to be little cards made carefully by people whose job it was to organ…

Precisely. I dare say software developers bemoaning this new world don't realise that they - too - are supplanters of a prior world. A sweet irony.

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#49

Post by airbreather »

tytho wrote: post #34
lmorchard wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, Undertale, one of the most celebrated video games, famously has a 1000+ line switch statement and AI had nothing to do with it. Sometimes you have to bang out something that works, just to even get the chance to be annoyed at how bad it is for next version.

Game development is often a completely different set of skills and maintenance profile compared to enterprise SaaS development. Many single-player games especially indie ones don’t need to worry about multi-year contracts or having to work through many cycles of different developers coming in and out of a project. Having a 1000+ line switch statement seems totally reasonable on a project with a handful of developers…

I would suggest that the 1000 line switch statement implies a state machine that has suffered from the "state explosion".

This usually results from an inadequate system-subsystem decomposition and/or not considering modes, both of which lead to hierarchal state machines instead of one big flat one.

This aspect of architecture is difficult to teach, it is one of the "black arts" that comes from experience and is difficult to codify.

Just one example why, is that often it might require the synthesis of state machines not directly evident as needed from the functionality, eg to perform a one to many or many to one functionality.

Re: Why craft-lovers are losing their craft

#50

Post by Insanity »

padolsey wrote: post #44
Insanity wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There's definitely _some_ who will use these tools to build systems for themselves. But do you think the chef who's been pulling insane hours in the restaurant wants to come home and build his own software? Or the teacher who just had to deal with an annoying classroom all day? People want software that just works, they'll pay for it, they don't want to use their computers to build their own software. Tha…

Does it have to be mutually exclusive? On-the-fly software does not destroy software. Gatekeeping software creation does not mean shoving the existing creators out, it just means creating a larger space that others can occupy, like when 'real' programmers had to slowly permit 'script kiddies' into their spaces. All feels a bit 'old guard' vs 'new guard'.

Not mutually exclusive, but I thought your initial post painted an overly rosy picture with the sentence "[..] allowing millions of people to finally use the devices they've been sitting in front of all these years".

I don't think it's happening at this scale. I'll admit I have no real data to back that up, it's just a hunch really. But I find it hard to believe that those people whom previously weren't interested in building software are now suddenly interested to build stuff with an LLM. I'm sure _some_ people are doing this, and then they either hit roadblocks and quit or stick with it an learn actual software engineering.

Looking at my non-tech bubble of friends and family, I don't see anyone actually doing that. I think it's a vocal minority that is doing this. That's just anecdata of course.

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