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Making

beej.us

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Re: Making

#111

Post by sashank_1509 »

planb wrote: post #70
pbohun wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all you care about is the end product and not how it's made, then you never become a better person. Your capacity for thinking and solving problems will never grow. You will never be an expert. Experts care about the process. Of course, you may not care, and that's fine. It's important that people not be delusional about this though. A person with no medical knowledge and an AI will never be as good as someone wit…

Of course. But I have been programming for over 30 years and I know that I cannot be an expert for everything. Besides that, maybe my capacity for thinking won’t grow anymore. But my capacity for solving problems just exploded in the last few years thanks to AI.

But you didn’t solve anything. AI solved it.

If you go to a coffee shop and ask extra ice, less sugar, more vanilla - did you make the coffee or the barista make the coffe and you just gave some requests to him. Using an LLM is far more similar to ordering coffee from a barista than it is to actually making the coffee. Of course the barista didn’t make the seeds, the milk etc. This is not an exact lawyerly statement.

But intuitively, you didn’t make anything when Claude Code writes all your code.

Re: Making

#112

Post by sashank_1509 »

mark242 wrote: post #44
uncivilized wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your compiler created the bytecode that the CPU runs. How can you take pride in writing your Rust code?

If you go to a coffee shop and ask for extra ice, whole milk, double espresso latte - did you make the coffee or did the Barista make it. You gave him some specific directions didn’t you?

It’s the same with LLMs.

Re: Making

#113

Post by sashank_1509 »

corysama wrote: post #24
hbcdbff wrote: post #8

This, I’ve completely lost interest in side projects outside of work since the emergence of LLMs. It does nothing for me any more

I'm the opposite. Between work and family, I don't get a lot of time to hole up in a cave with an IDE for fun. Prior to LLMs, it was a struggle to get much of anything done. So, I rarely tried. But, now I can get ideas fleshed out and even get code down in the small breaks I get to myself. Now I'm making progress where I wasn't before. Sometimes I'm not interested in the inner workings of a technology, I just want a…

I feel the divide is between people who built something for the joy of building vs people who built something for the joy of consuming (like you). For you LLM’s are great, you can spend less time, effort and still enjoy all the stuff you wanted to enjoy.

For someone who actually liked the process of building, LLMs don’t do anything except at worst muddy the market with AI generated slop that needs to be compared against, which will eventually be figured out I guess.

Re: Making

#114

Post by jerbearito »

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…

> but don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it

You did NOT make the software that you generated with AI. But there's nothing wrong with you feeling proud of initiating it. If anyone tells you that you shouldn't feel proud of the prompting you did, please just ignore that person.

Re: Making

#115

Post by ModernMech »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #111
planb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. But I have been programming for over 30 years and I know that I cannot be an expert for everything. Besides that, maybe my capacity for thinking won’t grow anymore. But my capacity for solving problems just exploded in the last few years thanks to AI.

But you didn’t solve anything. AI solved it. If you go to a coffee shop and ask extra ice, less sugar, more vanilla - did you make the coffee or the barista make the coffe and you just gave some requests to him. Using an LLM is far more similar to ordering coffee from a barista than it is to actually making the coffee. Of course the barista didn’t make the seeds, the milk etc. This is not an exact lawyerly statement.…

Why do you think using AI to write code is like ordering a coffee? They don't seem very similar to me so I'm curious how you see them as similar.

Re: Making

#116

Post by jeffreyrogers »

I think some people are drawn to technical careers because they like details and others are drawn to them because they like systems (now people are drawn for money too, but I'm talking about people who are more technically oriented). My theory is that if you are a systems person you find using LLMs fun and fulfilling and if you are a details person you find that they are the opposite. I have an acquaintance who is fairly well known for some of the work he did in computer vision (pre-neural net/deep learning), he's a details guy, and he was telling me how software is boring now because when he was young they were still figuring out how to do tons of things for the first time and now most software is just putting things together that we already know how to do. LLMs seem to be continuing this trend.

Re: Making

#117

Post by dimbletimbers »

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 can relate to and sympathize with time constraints and convenience arguments, but I think it’s more accurate in both the landscaping and app examples to say it wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t _asked/paid_ for it.

And you could have made it and then you could have been proud of it. And at least some of time, that’s more valuable than an unspecified “product”. I’m more attached to things I made than things I bought.

Re: Making

#118

Post by marcus_holmes »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #111
planb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. But I have been programming for over 30 years and I know that I cannot be an expert for everything. Besides that, maybe my capacity for thinking won’t grow anymore. But my capacity for solving problems just exploded in the last few years thanks to AI.

But you didn’t solve anything. AI solved it. If you go to a coffee shop and ask extra ice, less sugar, more vanilla - did you make the coffee or the barista make the coffe and you just gave some requests to him. Using an LLM is far more similar to ordering coffee from a barista than it is to actually making the coffee. Of course the barista didn’t make the seeds, the milk etc. This is not an exact lawyerly statement.…

If an expert barista goes to a coffee shop and orders a coffee, do they get a better quality coffee?

Because it's a common experience of folks using LLMs to code (and other activities) that experts get better results than non-experts.

So it definitely suggests that the human is part of the making process, not just the recipient of the finished product as in your coffee example.

Re: Making

#119

Post by marcus_holmes »

I think there's a difference between making something because you want the experience of making it, and making something because you want the end product.

I make my own furniture. It's not very good furniture. I could probably get better furniture cheaper by just buying it. But I love the experience of making it.

I don't write code any more. I used to really enjoy writing code, but mostly code became plumbing together bits of other people's work anyway and I stopped really enjoying it a while back. Having the tool do that for the last six months has been great. I really just want the end product for most of the situations where I would write code.

That may change. I might get back into hand-crafting the code for a project.

Either way, I make things. I don't see that having the tool write the code invalidates the making part. Writing the code is only a part of the overall process of making an application, and not even the most important part.

Re: Making

#120

Post by jimbokun »

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…

Just like those Southern plantation owners were so proud of all the things they “made” with slave labor.
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