171–180 of 246 posts
Get a better f* meaning to life, will you? Example: spend time looking at health/nutrition. I assure you that in 5 years you will get more satisfaction and returns than the assembly code you wrote. One important caveat - the subject of health/nutrition is SIGNIFICANTLY more complicated than assembly code, and not may sources out there know what they are talking about. Computers are child's play compared to biology.
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 that now it is worthless Writing whole software projects in assembly has been worthless and pointless for a couple of decades now. Even the projects who can put together a solid case will limit assembly to very specific components executed only in specific bits of a hot path. Perhaps the most performance-sensitive code we have today is high frequency trading and that field is dominated by C++. Als…
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.
Yes, it's not deterministic, and if you were using it commercially, the ROI would be terrible, and it's certainly not reliable but for a hobby project.... why not?
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.
LLMs lower the barrier for execution - they make you faster. The unstated question is: faster at what - they can make you faster at something clever, or faster at the entirely wrong thing...
Your point is correct if we're looking at it through a scarcity lens - the effort to make it certainly decreased a lot - but that doesn't mean that anything is now worthless. We can just move onto doing bigger, better things now, until we hit the next limits...
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. I'm not going to yearn for the days of hitting steel on an anvil when we can have steel produced in a factory.
Have you ever done blacksmithing? It’s tremendously satisfying. Sure, if you want 300,000 spoons, it’s far better to use a factory process and get essentially identical results. But if you only want a few spoons and accept (or even value) that the spoons will all be a little different, hand-forging them is quite enjoyable. I’ve written enough assembly and done enough blacksmithing to know that the metaphor isn’t quit…
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.
Look at the bright side, it's much more feasible now :) Yes, it's not deterministic, and if you were using it commercially, the ROI would be terrible, and it's certainly not reliable but for a hobby project.... why not? 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. LLMs lower the barrier for execution - they make you f…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at the bright side, it's much more feasible now :) Yes, it's not deterministic, and if you were using it commercially, the ROI would be terrible, and it's certainly not reliable but for a hobby project.... why not? 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. LLMs lower the barrier for execution - they make you f…
> 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.
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 doing :)
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 that now it is worthless Writing whole software projects in assembly has been worthless and pointless for a couple of decades now. Even the projects who can put together a solid case will limit assembly to very specific components executed only in specific bits of a hot path. Perhaps the most performance-sensitive code we have today is high frequency trading and that field is dominated by C++. Als…
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 doesn't diminish the art form though. If anything, I value these kinds of hand written projects even more now that so many people are pulled in by AI doing their projects for them in a fraction of the time and effort. I love doing these kinds of projects, and I love writing assembly, but I must admit that the temptation of just copy pasting generated code is big sometimes, because it's _right there_. In this conte…
With LLMs, we can't tell anymore if something is a labor of love with hundreds of hours of work behind it, or half a dozen prompts to Claude Code.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was an artform and a necessity. It's even more of an artform now.
I appreciate the effort. But why not put the skills into something that would be genuinely useful to others or solve a pain point? Open source the results or handover to someone who would like to maintain it.