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Making

beej.us

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Re: Making

#101

Post by fantasizr »

jjice wrote: post #100

Captures my feelings as well. I don't get the same joy I used to because I end up using an LLM because it'll be faster. I need to come to terms with speed not taking precedence over fun. The act of writing is something I need to learn to refocus on again without the thought of the "inefficiency" of doing so. I want to feel like I did when I was 13 and writing code in the middle of the night. Beej's writing always imp…

steve vai the guitarist talks about how learning and doing the act gives you dignity and self respect for having done something. That's what's being cutout when you just 'prompt' it, be it words, code, or music.

Re: Making

#102

Post by networked »

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.

"Produce" is a good verb. "Direct", too, if it's a creative work and you give close instructions and make judgements calls. "Design" is accurate if you prompt with an idea about the form of what you want.

"Make" gets confusing for AI-assisted projects because it carries a connotation of craft. It seems fully justified for a code project that is 90% you, 10% AI (you'd say you made something that was 90% you, 10% human help) and misleading for a project that is 90% AI, 10% you (unless the meaning of the word shifts).

Here is a relevant comment I wrote in a thread about AI art (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705952#46708186):

>> If you do it daily, in-house, for your own products... you might just have the title "Art Director."

> "Art director" seems accurate for what a skillful user of art generators with a specific vision does.

> I have also thought that since people find "director" lofty (thanks to auteur theory?) and therefore pretentious to assume, one could borrow "producer" from Vocaloid: https://vocaloid.fandom.com/wiki/Producer (alternative front end: https://antifandom.com/vocaloid/wiki/Producer).

Re: Making

#103

Post by e808 »

This is definitely something I have been mulling as I 'made' several software projects that I have been tossing around in my head over my lifetime via vibe-coding recently that would have taken me 10x to 100x the time to a MVP, with AI, i can push it way beyond the MVP and enchance and enrich with features I may not have considered without the almost immediate MVP production.

What is the end-product value? I definitely have found value for myself since its things that I considered for a while for myself. Others may appreciate the end product. But is the value of the end product the 'original idea'? or the comprehensive prompt to produce it again? the number of tokens it burned to produce the end product? The number hours it took me to work on it to get the end product? (debugging, enchancing, user interface, design)?

Answers I dont have, but questions I have been mulling while immensely enjoying being able to produce random ideas I have had in me head for decades fairly quickly.

Re: Making

#104

Post by echelon »

apsurd wrote: post #99
echelon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nolan made "The Odyssey". It was his vision. Hitchcock made "Psycho". Miyazaki made "Princess Mononoke". While you can say Roger Deakins shot "Blade Runner 2049" or Hans Zimmer scored "Interstellar", even these masters of their craft paired with directors to make their films. The film is still typically the work of the auteur director, and the director (usually) exercises control over all of these pieces. You can tel…

I agree with you. There would be no X without Y person. Undeniably. The scope of the project matters seems clear though. I think it should be clear and obvious what one means when they say "I made this" recipe from scratch. Even then, there's "did you invent this recipe!?" or do you mean you "prepared it in your kitchen?." That scale and scope is very different from what it means to make a film. And it's where I agre…

Future people will look back on this transitional time with curiosity. This is all going to be a non-issue in time.

The fairy path of human language is going to adopt "creation" as assuming someone could have prompted it. It's the path of least resistance, and it's something that will only increase in normality in our daily lives and experience.

Nobody in the future is going to have these paragraphs-long diatribes about what does and does not constitute creation. People are just going to say, "I made this."

And that's that. We'll judge based on the significance and novelty of the output or work.

    Canon mountaintop photography : smartphone selfies :: Quality AI art and software : ChatGPT Miyazaki cartoons
Nobody bickers about the definition of "photograph".

Nobody will bicker about "created", either.

If someone in the future wants to spend a year making a stop-motion, claymation-animated feature, people will still think that's cool. It'll be something they "created". But it won't stop the world when most people are using new tools, nor will it stop us from calling their outputs "creations" and something they "made".

I'm making something with Claude Code right now. And to be very deliberate about it - I am making it.

Re: Making

#105

Post by [deleted] »

InitialBP wrote: post #55
wlesieutre wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it. So like when I went to a restaurant last week and "made" a cheeseburger with no lettuce and extra onions, because it wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it. To me, making something can mean you did the physical work of its creation even if there's no particular creative expression, like "I made a peanut butter and jelly sandw…

The restaurant comparison doesn't really hold up. The parent didn't go choose from a menu of new apps that they wanted AI to create. They discovered a problem or a feature that doesn't exist on other platforms and they employed tools to create that. Does a product manager not get to claim they "made" something because they plan it out and employ others to actually build the finished product? Both of the examples the…

[deleted]

Re: Making

#106

Post by koinedad »

I generally agree. If I build something bigger with smaller AI generated pieces I still built that thing, but even that thing doesn’t feel the same. I’m not as connected to the components that’s for sure. There’s a loss that is occurring

Re: Making

#108

Post by Balooga »

liminal-dev wrote: post #90
wlesieutre wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it. So like when I went to a restaurant last week and "made" a cheeseburger with no lettuce and extra onions, because it wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it. To me, making something can mean you did the physical work of its creation even if there's no particular creative expression, like "I made a peanut butter and jelly sandw…

I disagree with this line of reasoning. To the same extent, I could say that you did not make an app because you didn’t write the compiled assembly code, build the processor, make the silicone yourself, etc. Tools are tools. Same as Photoshop, Ableton, they get you to where you want to go. Where is the line drawn?

When you create a work using a tool, you own the copyright.

When you create a work using an LLM, there is no copyright.

So then isn't an LLM less than a tool?

Re: Making

#109

Post by julienmarie »

Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright etc... don't make buildings but design them. But the buildings are theirs, no question asked.

Steve Jobs created the Mac, the IPod, the iPhone. He didn't code or designed any of the PCBs.

Painters of the Renaissance had whole workshops with apprentices painting for them.

Creating a software is way more than just lines of code. It's understanding a market, a need or a want, it's marketing, it's copywriting. It's defining what to build, what not to build, and envisionning the final form of it.

Yes, the individual craftmen who worked on a Frank Lloyd Wright house can all be very proud of their work. They can say I built this roof. I built this wall. I built this waterfall. But the house is undeniably Wright's.

What we are all lamenting about is the fear of losing the monopoly of a craft. Which is legitimate. The same way furniture used to be hand crafted by skilled woodworkers, bespoke and expensively, have been replaced by IKEA. Now the skilled woodworkers left are now focusing on the high end of the market. The issue with programming is that clients are companies and the acceptance criteria are binary: does it work or not.

Re: Making

#110

Post by skydhash »

2III7 wrote: post #61
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…

Many people have a disillusion that an LLM is something more than a tool.

Git is also a tool, but cloning a repo does not means I created the software.
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