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Making

beej.us

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Re: Making

#31

Post by ge96 »

vector_spaces wrote: post #29
ge96 wrote: post #18

I'm trying to get it back. I went through a period of 2 months or so where I didn't want to do anything not even watch TV except drink. So I've been sober for a couple weeks now, think I'm starting to get it back. But I'm still lazy af right now. I miss making hardware, I design/make my own cameras and little self navigating robots. I did finally fix my camera after it rolled across the floor of my car during a tight…

I think don't be too hard on yourself. If you haven't already, it may be worth considering whether ADHD or something else might be playing a role. We aren't machines, we're messy bundles of biology and understanding our own particular messy bundle can go a long way towards getting it rolling in the right direction.

oh yeah I definitely have some flavor of ADHD, I'm not medicated so I just use music (looping a song or album over and over). Thankfully I have a chill job now where I don't have to get much work done, kind of coasting lately.

Currently trying to figure out the right kind of caffeine intake, seems hot chocolate might be my jam vs. coffee. I'm lucky we have a gym at work so I work out first 30 minutes of the day helps and do walks.

I have to grind on the side though to get out as I have $100K in debt. That six fig day job still means I'm check to check.

Re: Making

#32

Post by skydhash »

bufbupa wrote: post #13

>It's not just the loss of the craft and the problem-solving challenge and whatever else. It's the loss of making. It's the loss of understanding . When you make something, you gain a deeper appreciation for the nuance of all that is required to breath life into it. When you outsource understanding to another (agent, contractor, w/e), you're losing the nuanced understanding of the creation. >After all, you create the…

> I think where people get worked up about this, is that it's not easy to tell what understanding other folks are taking away from their AI usage.

Alongside understanding, you also loose taste and perception. You can still say whether some things is good or bad, especially if you interact with it, but you can no longer articulate why. And with perception loss, you can no longer preempt a bad situation as you lose your awareness of things.

So for you a car may be a vehicle that you drive around. But for a mechanics it's a much complex system. When something doesn't work, you will lack the vocabulary to express what's wrong. And even when everything works, you may not be able to explain how.

The thing is, LLM are very buggy translators. Agents in software development help because they provide a way for LLMs to verify their output. But correctness is very hard to express. OK for a simpler task, but not really for a complex systems. Just like fluency in a foreign language is not about knowing the rules of grammar and a lots of words, but also knowing the idioms and other figure of speech.

Re: Making

#33

Post by nitefood »

bufbupa wrote: post #13

>It's not just the loss of the craft and the problem-solving challenge and whatever else. It's the loss of making. It's the loss of understanding . When you make something, you gain a deeper appreciation for the nuance of all that is required to breath life into it. When you outsource understanding to another (agent, contractor, w/e), you're losing the nuanced understanding of the creation. >After all, you create the…

I entirely agree with this take. I've used LLMs for "making purposes" in two fundamental scenarios so far: to write code in languages I'm not 100% familiar with, and to help with circuit design.

In the code scenario, I most likely won't go over the final result: for various reasons, I often lack the interest and drive to understand the nuts and bolts of it. So I'll just try to assess whether it's sufficiently good for my goals, and then move on.

But in the circuit design scenario, I only use it as a "technical expert" to bounce ideas back and forth with, and to explore concepts I don't fully grasp. I use it as a sort of ELI5 machine, and never ever ask it to do something for me - just to explain.

The fundamental difference in outcome is that I remember next to nothing about the code, and have no feeling of "ownership" over it, nor do I feel proud or care about it at all.

Conversely, I am incredibly proud of the PCBs and circuits I design, even if technically some parts of it came straight out of AI recommendations. I really feel like I did the job, and AI was just a helper tool to get the tough concepts untangled quicker in my head.

Ultimately I think if you delegate 100% of the work to AI, and don't care enough to use its output to at least learn something, it's only natural that you'll never feel any connection to it, let alone any sense of ownership over its output. Being the prompt author is simply not enough. That's why I think you hit the nail on the head there: deeply understanding the output is the key, I just couldn't put my finger on it before, and now I can. Thanks for that.

Re: Making

#34

Post by planb »

Zolomon wrote: post #22
planb wrote: post #20

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single line of code for it. I wouldn’t show it around and proclaim what a great programmer I am, because I did not program it, but coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product. When I plan a remake of my garden and then hire…

To me there is a difference that lies in the words. E.g. `making` and `producing` both result in the creation of something, but `making` has a more active part while `producing` has a more supervisory part. This became more relevant to me when I began meeting producers as a software engineer in game development.

But that’s just arguing about the meaning of the word “make” now. The real discussion does not seem to be about words though but about value. If you find vibe-coded software worthless, you value the process and work that went into it more than the finished end product. I can fully understand this. But it’s just not the way I feel about it.

Re: Making

#35

Post by Multiplayer »

One area that I find really compelling and useful now is controlling hardware that I've struggled to use in the past, like the BlackMagic ATEM video switcher/controller. They are very powerful and can turn your space into an incredible video studio. The software that ships with them is probably appropriate for experienced video techs. The last time I setup a studio to run a webinar with one it took me a couple of days to get it working how I needed. Yes, I love tinkering with hardware so there is that and I did enjoy figuring it out. Today I had a webinar that needed to be setup quickly and thought it would just be a raw Zoom feed. Instead, within an hour, I had a full video switching system with embedded graphics, feeds from a laptop configured with live content, multiple cameras, etc and a custom html page specific just to todays webinar to drive it all. I've used a number of 3rd party apps for the ATEM series. They all have to boil the ocean. This kind of personalized project tech is the perfect software hole for llm's to fill.

Re: Making

#36

Post by uncivilized »

planb wrote: post #20

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single line of code for it. I wouldn’t show it around and proclaim what a great programmer I am, because I did not program it, but coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product. When I plan a remake of my garden and then hire…

In your examples, you didn’t “make” anything. The person whose work trained the LLM made the work. The landscaper made the lawn. I don’t know how it’s possible to take pride in doing nothing.

I can hire a maid to make my bed for me and tell her how exactly to fluff my pillows and duvet but I would take no pride in that.

Re: Making

#37

Post by jscd »

planb wrote: post #20

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single line of code for it. I wouldn’t show it around and proclaim what a great programmer I am, because I did not program it, but coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product. When I plan a remake of my garden and then hire…

I don't think the "would not exist if I hadn't created it" argument really works. If I delegate a project to someone else, and they do the project, does that mean I did it? In my mind, I could comfortably say I managed it, or I designed some parts of it, but I really couldn't take the credit for actually doing it. You wanted it to be done, so you asked someone to do it.

If anything, I would say your conclusion should be flipped: you didn't really do the "making," but you can still be proud of what you _did_ do: provide direction and a vision for a solution to a problem.

Re: Making

#38

Post by phaedrus »

spiresofagartha wrote: post #6

I agree with the article. I've never understood the notion of some LLM people saying you shouldn't care about the end result, and you should do it for its sake. It made me feel like a narcissist and that I was programming for showmanship, but I think making is inherent to (most) people's satisfaction and it's hard to tell something was made by you when all you did was prompting. Maybe a hot take, but I do think, that…

There was this persistent meme in bodybuilding discussions - I don't know if it's still a thing - to say about steroids "well they're just a shortcut". The justification that it just got you faster to where you could have gotten slower naturally was used by former steroid users to justify themselves, as an accusation of cheating, as an accusation of laziness, and as hope for dreamers who go to the gym but do not see those extreme results. In reality, steroids do allow some to achieve a body that would not be possible under a natural/genetic with any amount of time due to how anabolism and catabolism balance and scale.

I think there's a lot of parallel with experienced programmers using LLMs and that idea about steroids that it just gets you there faster. I'm pretty sure I could eventually program most of the things I've used AI to write, and what it produces at the top end I/you can't really prove that I wouldn't have thought of it. But is that really true?

Re: Making

#39

Post by planb »

uncivilized wrote: post #36
planb wrote: post #20

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single line of code for it. I wouldn’t show it around and proclaim what a great programmer I am, because I did not program it, but coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product. When I plan a remake of my garden and then hire…

In your examples, you didn’t “make” anything. The person whose work trained the LLM made the work. The landscaper made the lawn. I don’t know how it’s possible to take pride in doing nothing. I can hire a maid to make my bed for me and tell her how exactly to fluff my pillows and duvet but I would take no pride in that.

Let’s not argue about the meaning of “making”, but that’s a very limited view of how value is created. So in your view the producer or even the director of a movie cannot take pride in it because the actors are the ones doing the work?

Re: Making

#40

Post by dmrivers »

layer8 wrote: post #5

> What's the real difference in that gray area? I'm not sure. I think it hinges on something that has to do with making versus asking to be made, even if that line isn't particularly clear. For me the difference is in the extent that I can reason about how changes in the input affect the observable behavior of the output. When the executable the compiler outputs doesn’t behave in the way I intended, then in 99.99% of…

But does this mean that a 99.99% reliable LLM would turn us back into the mode of us building it again? I would not say so.

I think for tasks that are about decisions, having the LLM make decisions is what makes it feel like the LLM did something for me.

Consider mowing the lawn. Imagine I had a lawnmower robot that does the mowing all on its own. Despite perfect accuracy, I didn't mow the lawn; it did. If I sit on that lawnmower the whole time and start driving it instead of letting it go on its own, then I mowed the lawn. Even if I stand there and control it with a joystick, I still mowed the lawn. Ownership comes from the decisions about where to mow.

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