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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

#141

Post by acdha »

juleiie wrote: post #52
bawolff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it though is that LLMs (especially in novice hands) create code that is more difficult to review and has subtler bugs. Code review is (for many) the least fun part of programming. Like imagine if your hobby was cooking, but you hated the cleanup. If you buy a robot that automates the fun part at the cost of making twice the mess, that is not a good trade off no matter how many extra cookies you end up…

[flagged]

> ADHD wins over autism in the immediate future. It was balanced in the past for development to need both but now it’s a total hyperactive victory of general knowledge, master of none.

That’s an interesting framing. I’m not sure I agree with your strong conclusion but that’s mostly because I think there’s a second axis about maintenance – you can make a grand strategy game in a couple months but it’s harder to make it balanced, fun, and to keep shipping updates which players like. A prototype or hobby experiment doesn’t have that problem nearly as much and I think that’s where we see such bimodal reactions where some people think it’s a huge productivity boost and others see modest or even negative results.

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

#142

Post by jrapdx3 »

_dwt wrote: post #122
juleiie wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think we’re on opposite sides but this is the first time I’ve seen someone in the wild share my suspicions that the LLM conflict is part of some vast ADHD vs autism hyperwar. At one point I was collecting posts I found where LLM boosters explicitly mentioned how it interacted with their ADHD.

The contest you described (people with ADHD vs. autism) would have an enormously negative effect. But there are reasons to think it's unlikely. FWIW at least 25% of ADHD adults manifest autistic traits. Hardly surprising, clinicians regard overlapping neurodevelopmental disorders as the rule and not the exception.

An online community works when participants learn and share knowledge gained. Contests, with self or others, disrupt learning and sharing, hence by definition constitute "bad behavior". If it exists, the hyperwar you allude to will harm communities more than all LLMs combined could do.

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

#143

Post by ivewonyoung »

_dwt wrote: post #122
juleiie wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think we’re on opposite sides but this is the first time I’ve seen someone in the wild share my suspicions that the LLM conflict is part of some vast ADHD vs autism hyperwar. At one point I was collecting posts I found where LLM boosters explicitly mentioned how it interacted with their ADHD.

>At one point I was collecting posts I found where LLM boosters explicitly mentioned how it interacted with their ADHD.

Care to share it?

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

#144

Post by ivewonyoung »

acedTrex wrote: post #105
hgoel wrote: post #58

I was somewhat conflicted seeing the way the OSdev community responds to LLM usage. I understand the conflict: the point of doing OSdev is that you're learning the low level hardware details and directly commanding the machine from the lowest level accessible. LLM usage is at odds with this. But, on the other hand, the primary issue with OSdev on modern hardware is the complete lack of documentation for most hardware…

> targeted usage for tedium that has very little value overall The entire point of the article was the hobby is ascribing value to that tedium that the LLM is removing.

There are different kinds of tedium that LLMs automate, being a hobbyist doesn't mean you see value in all of them. Removing tedium that you personally find uninteresting or boring actually accelerates the hobby because now you're able to get past the tedious parts instead of giving up or delaying doing them. That does not mean that everyone finds those parts boring.

Even before LLMs came along a lot of hobbyists were using high level languages, linters, IDEs etc. instead of handcrafting assembly or machine language. Those tools increased the capability of hobbyists to build what they find interesting.

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

#145

Post by killix »

eterm wrote: post #42

I've found myself with this problem, as I've used LLMs to accelerate solving problems I've wanted to solve, only to find myself unable to share them back, because LLM usage has "polluted" my effort in the eyes of maintainers, even if the result has been something I've re-implemented by hand after learning from the agent-driven development what the issue is and how to reproduce it. What's the solution, to just disenga…

[flagged]

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

#146

Post by jrapdx3 »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #140
_dwt wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we’re on opposite sides but this is the first time I’ve seen someone in the wild share my suspicions that the LLM conflict is part of some vast ADHD vs autism hyperwar. At one point I was collecting posts I found where LLM boosters explicitly mentioned how it interacted with their ADHD.

I'm pretty skeptical of people who are ADHD and claim to be getting boosted by LLMs. It's hell for my ADHD, personally. It's an infinite rabbit hole generator and distraction machine. I have to use browser extensions to filter out stuff like Stack Exchange suggestions for interesting topics, too. I have had to block Wikipedia in the past to avoid rabbit holes there I'm better now than I used to be but I am skeptical…

> ... multi-tasking is not a strength, it's a sign of distraction

Interesting point of view from one who's been there. Intuitively the comment makes a lot of sense.

In a way human multitasking resembles how single-threaded computer programs work. That is, we focus on one task at a time but tasks can be interleaved to give an illusion of doing several tasks at the same time. Managing several tasks requires remembering the next step to do when leaving one task to attend to another.

That suggests ADHD people lose track of where they left off when performing several tasks. Distraction plays a role, but I think problematic working memory is the major issue. Among ADHD researchers there's a saying, "people with ADHD know what to do but don't do what they know." ADHD task performance may improve with proper treatment.

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

#148

Post by ranger_danger »

prewett wrote: post #99

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…

> The whole point is to do it yourself.

I think if that were always true, calculators would be banned in schools.

Surely the "point" might be different things to different people depending on their exact situation/context.

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

#150

Post by deterministic »

ryandvm wrote: post #41
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.

Yeah, in my experience, the people that got into software engineering because of the money are absolutely thrilled with how LLMs are changing the industry. They mostly just liked getting results and LLMs are great for that. The people like me that sort of just stumbled into this career as a result of spending the evenings of our youth trying to get the computer to do interesting things don't seem to have as much appr…

Not my experience at all. I taught myself assembly language when I was 11 just for fun, and I'm still programming as a hobby more than 40 years later, even though I also do it professionally.

And I love using LLMs. They take care of all the boring boilerplate, letting me focus on the parts I actually enjoy.

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