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I created my first AI-assisted pull request

nelson.cloud

41–50 of 83 posts

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#41
post #8

This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken to properly implement and test it held you back from doing it. Obviously, anyone else who wanted this feature came to the same conclusion. This new tool reduced the amount of time that it would take. So you used the tool. You used the tool to bring the feature i…

Have you tried just not feeling depressed?

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#42
post #11
post #8

This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken to properly implement and test it held you back from doing it. Obviously, anyone else who wanted this feature came to the same conclusion. This new tool reduced the amount of time that it would take. So you used the tool. You used the tool to bring the feature i…

We grew tomatoes last summer. Over the last 2 years, something about tomatoes (and BLTs in particular) really clicked for me; we'd grown tomatoes many previous summers, and I could give a shit, but last summer I cared a lot about our home-grown tomatoes. And I totally did feel less good about BLTs I made with supermarket heirloom tomatoes! It was irrational, but I did feel that way. I get where people are coming from…

It's not irrational at all! The act of doing something yourself brings inherent pleasure and satisfaction, whether that thing is "growing tomatoes" or "coding a feature". It makes us feel useful.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#43
Part of why I originally picked programming as a profession is because it felt like a way to get paid to be more of an artisan craftsman. Ultimately, I don't think it was ever quite that, even before ai.

But now post LLM coding agents, its not at all that. Nothing about programming for money resembles artisanship.

It might be time to try sewing wallets or something...

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#44
post #8

This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken to properly implement and test it held you back from doing it. Obviously, anyone else who wanted this feature came to the same conclusion. This new tool reduced the amount of time that it would take. So you used the tool. You used the tool to bring the feature i…

Except, calling it a "tool" is exactly why OP feels bad. Simply phrasing it another way, I.E. "OP paid for a service to implement a feature he wanted," would completely remove the guilt and be more technically accurate.

IMO, the way we talk about using AI leads to a lot of confusion and needs to change.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#45
post #8

This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken to properly implement and test it held you back from doing it. Obviously, anyone else who wanted this feature came to the same conclusion. This new tool reduced the amount of time that it would take. So you used the tool. You used the tool to bring the feature i…

> When you eat a strawberry do you feel like an impostor for not growing it yourself?

No, but if I asked an intern to eat it for me, I wouldn't feel like I did anything or experienced anything at all.

That's what LLM coding feels like--like I'm not doing anything meaningful. It's like hiring someone to love my kid for me.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#46
post #25
post #3

At the end of the day, the shareholders care about delivering features, gaining customers, and making money. They don’t care how software is built. They absolutely do care how software is built. They just don't weight the factors the same way you do. Product companies exist to convert software into money by providing utility to users. There's really no part of the transaction that meaningfully involves how much fun y…

"There's really no part of the transaction that meaningfully involves how much fun you're personally having building it." Funny. Steve Jobs was all about fun. Seems to have worked out well given Apple has maintained much of the culture Steve left behind.

> Steve Jobs was all about fun

By every account I’ve seen, Steve Jobs cared that the users of the product were having fun. He did not care at all how much fun the people building the product had.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#48
post #2

Yeah I mean, now you know how managers feel? :) spend all day talking to people (except it's LLMs) and not sure if you accomplished anything, but people seem happy The plus side is for your personal things like this you don't have to use it of course!

Article addresses that.

Author says he does enjoy managing people, challenging them, and seeing them grow and accomplish things they couldn’t before.

None of that accompanies “managing” an LLM.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#49
post #8

This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken to properly implement and test it held you back from doing it. Obviously, anyone else who wanted this feature came to the same conclusion. This new tool reduced the amount of time that it would take. So you used the tool. You used the tool to bring the feature i…

> When you eat a strawberry do you feel like an impostor for not growing it yourself?

I don’t think this is the right question. What you posit is a consumption dilemma. It’s a valid question, but it focuses on what values we might arbitrarily ascribe to how we source what we consume.

The OPs dilemma is more akin to giving a cutting board for Christmas that you bought vs handmade. Or some other. I think these cases of how we present what it appears we created is the dilemma OP is facing.

Re: I created my first AI-assisted pull request

#50
post #36
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, American tomatoes are generally terrible source, am Romanian.

If you buy the variety most often found in American grocery stores (usually labeled as Roma tomatoes), they're terrible. Try the variety labeled as "tomatoes on the vine" (four-digit produce code 4664, which I know from memory, having punched it in to so many self-checkout scanners over the years). They're actually juicy and tasty the way tomatoes should be. Avoid Roma tomatoes, they're cardboard masquerading as a to…

Roma are not the “normal” tomatoes sold fresh in American grocery stores.
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