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Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

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Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#91

Post by samatman »

anematode wrote: post #80
samatman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping in mind that I'm going strictly off the commit[0], a bit-packing layout is very much the kind of thing which is not subject to copyright in the first place. Neither are algorithms. Ideas, in general, are not subject to copyright: expression is. So "lifting ideas from other engines", as you yourself put it, is entirely licit, no matter how you do it. _Should_ you credit others when so doing? I err on the side…

You'll notice I didn't mention copyright, and that's because I don't think it's relevant. I think your analysis is correct. Keep in mind too that Stockfish – the engine I work on, although I wasn't at the time – was the subject of a high-profile defense of the GPL in Germany: https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2021/our-lawsuit-against-che... . That case was different as it involved wholesale copying of the source code,…

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Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#93

Post by arjie »

Is this novel? Every group that spent some large number of hours gaining some skill hates when that duration is not required for newcomers to accomplish what the skill allows. Not every individual of that group but the group as a whole. It’s just that devaluation of one’s skill capital sucks.

I happen to think the alternative world where no one’s skill capital can be devalued sucks more, but it’s hard to build a community around that because the same hours that build skill also build taste, and when you remove the former you remove the latter.

So you get a community with garbage in it. Haha!

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#94

Post by sandoze »

I can respect a developer who is still smitten with their craft to feel a bit anxious when the topic of LLM generated code comes up. I have a child who never grows tired of building their next game but first has to build the engine from scratch (needless to say they've built a lot of engines, not so many games). This use to frustrate me but then I realized the joy is in making a concept of a game for them. When I suggest Claude might get the job done faster I get a death glare followed by an eye roll. I get it, I've been in the industry long enough where coding is more of a means to an end and not the same novelty it once was.

More dangerous are communities who shun AI and treat every disclosure like a Scarlett letter. Generally the loudest opinions come from consumers (fan bois) and not creators. I think this will eventually drive new innovators away from these communities. These vocal naysayers have likely never experienced being a project manager, lead developer, and QA for an agent writing code. Instead they think a prompt magically creates software, but without wearing all these hats at once, you get something far worse than 'slop'. Call me crazy, but I think these multi-hat 'developers' using an agent and are dipping their toe into LLM development are going to raise the bar and leave us vim users in the dust.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#95

Post by matheusmoreira »

bakugo wrote: post #79
matheusmoreira wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lifting ideas It's not like ideas are protected by copyright though. Copyright protects the specific expression of the idea, not the idea itself. Anyone can "lift ideas" from anyone else, including proprietary software.

Except "Claude, take this code and change the variable names up a bit" is not lifting ideas, and you would not get away with doing that to software belonging to a company with a competent legal department.

> "Claude, take this code and change the variable names up a bit"

Is it a fact that they did that?

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#97

Post by markus_zhang »

QuantumNoodle wrote: post #4

A hobby is something you enjoy the process of doing, not just the end result. Everybody likes a clean home, but cleaning is rarely a hobby. LLMs expedite achieving the end result. Take from that what you will.

I think this is why that I limit the use of LLM in my hobbyist project, but not in my work. I found LLM particularly useful of generating say VSCode configuration JSON files and it saved me a lot of headaches. It is also very good at finding the right tool for the job (e.g. which binary to use to write a floppy image).

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#99

Post by prewett »

Using LLMs for hobby programming is like using a computer to solve sudoku puzzles. The whole point is to do it yourself.

Personally, I find that when I start thinking "hmm, I wonder if I could write a program to automate this" is when I quit the pursuit. After figuring out the basic tricks to sudoku, it turned into busywork. (Or trying to micromanage StarCraft)

(Tagentially, if you want to automate programming, then I'm going to find myself a different field, because I have no interest in the results of sudoku puzzles. I especially have no interest in managing agents, which I see as junior-dev bullshitters, and would not enjoy managing such a team in real life)

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#100

Post by anematode »

samatman wrote: post #91
anematode wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll notice I didn't mention copyright, and that's because I don't think it's relevant. I think your analysis is correct. Keep in mind too that Stockfish – the engine I work on, although I wasn't at the time – was the subject of a high-profile defense of the GPL in Germany: https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2021/our-lawsuit-against-che... . That case was different as it involved wholesale copying of the source code,…

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, eh? :)

Anyway, I don't see how this relates to the original discussion. Nor do I think the irony is particularly deep: As far as I'm aware, Deep Blue didn't plagiarize Kasparov, and indeed alpha-beta search is quite different than how humans calculate. But yes, I'd have been very demoralized if I were Kasparov, although he seems to be doing well now.

Edit: Regarding being mean-spirited, sorry to say, but I don't particularly care for the feelings of someone who has been repeatedly dishonest and used LLMs to respond to people engaging in good faith. That latter path has been exhausted now.

To co-opt your conflation of legality and morality: free speech, mf!

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