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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

#251

Post by shiomiru »

alkonaut wrote: post #224

Programming has five phases effectively: 1) You figure out what problem to solve. 2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem. 3) You actually implement the solution. 4) You see the solution work, for yourself. 5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on. If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you s…

There's also the economic problem that programmers had until recently been highly regarded because steps 2-3 were hard. "Open source" solved this partially by utilizing the labor such (relatively) well-paid people gave away "for the love of it", but it was not nearly enough to put most out of work.

Now there is a plagiarism machine built on top of decades of this work that seemingly solves 3 and promises to solve 2 (badly, but usually this matters little), the programmers that (indirectly) helped build it are told they're fools for doing so, and threatened by losing their status if they don't adapt to the "entrepreneurial way" (well, the full promise is "you'll lose it anyway, but if you cooperate in stuffing sama's pockets then maybe you get to keep it a bit longer").

So what really surprises me is not that people are upset but that so few are.

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

#252

Post by mibsl »

ang_cire wrote: post #237
alkonaut wrote: post #224

Programming has five phases effectively: 1) You figure out what problem to solve. 2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem. 3) You actually implement the solution. 4) You see the solution work, for yourself. 5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on. If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you s…

It's funny, because I would consider myself a tinkerer (and I have a large backlog of pre-LLM programs), but the coding itself isn't the main thing that brings me joy, it's the phase 2 and phase 4 combo: figure out how to solve it, see whether your solution was correct (and actually use the program for its purpose). The actual implementation is extraneous to that. To carry forward the sudoku analogy, I care about fig…

I'd say, in this analagy, step two is filling in half the numbers by gut feeling, and then three is seeing how wrong the guesses were and actually solving it.

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

#253

Post by skydhash »

ang_cire wrote: post #237
alkonaut wrote: post #224

Programming has five phases effectively: 1) You figure out what problem to solve. 2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem. 3) You actually implement the solution. 4) You see the solution work, for yourself. 5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on. If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you s…

It's funny, because I would consider myself a tinkerer (and I have a large backlog of pre-LLM programs), but the coding itself isn't the main thing that brings me joy, it's the phase 2 and phase 4 combo: figure out how to solve it, see whether your solution was correct (and actually use the program for its purpose). The actual implementation is extraneous to that. To carry forward the sudoku analogy, I care about fig…

3 doesn’t matter that much (unless it’s part of 2: new language or new libraries), and that’s why I don’t use LLM for it. Because LLM forces you to pay attention, yes you can have something that works somehow in one go, but the code makes you queasy (too complex for the purpose, or just weird).

So I do 3 because coding is like writing English for me (which is my 3rd language). I don’t care much for it, because it’s neither hard no easy. It’s just mechanical.

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

#254

Post by vidarh »

brookst wrote: post #182
Schnitz wrote: post #166

Because people that enjoy programming for programming's sake don't want an LLM to do the programming for them - isn't it obvious? It's just like with any other hobby, people who like car racing created rules that force you to drive yourself, even though they'd get faster lap times with electronic driver aids. People who enjoy grappling created rules that force you to grapple, even though striking could win a fight fa…

This is true, but as usual nobody can agree on what "doing it yourself" means. Few cars are manual steering, manual brakes, manual transmission. Few grappling bodies go all Greek-naked. Few chess bodies forbid researching previous games or your opponent. The list is indeed endless, and every single person thinks they are using just the right amount of assistance; anything less is pointlessly difficult, anything more…

Fully agree with this. Also did lots of 6502 assembly, and also love doing agent-driven development. I also still like writing code manually and tweaking everything for myself, but those serve two different purposes.

Sometimes I'm having fun getting to the output I want and otherwise wouldn't have had time to. Sometimes I'm having fun exploring the code.

I don't care if someone don't see the value in one or the other of those, and to me they stand on equal footing as things I find both fun and valuable for different reasons.

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

#255

Post by ang_cire »

mibsl wrote: post #252
ang_cire wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, because I would consider myself a tinkerer (and I have a large backlog of pre-LLM programs), but the coding itself isn't the main thing that brings me joy, it's the phase 2 and phase 4 combo: figure out how to solve it, see whether your solution was correct (and actually use the program for its purpose). The actual implementation is extraneous to that. To carry forward the sudoku analogy, I care about fig…

I'd say, in this analagy, step two is filling in half the numbers by gut feeling, and then three is seeing how wrong the guesses were and actually solving it.

Perhaps I'm uncommon in that I make diagrams and even sometimes pseudo-code (mostly in the form of mapping out function names, because they serve as a proxy for program flow paths) before I write actual code, but I don't find myself really going off gut feeling. I have a pretty good idea of what the program is going to look like and do before I start, and with e.g. Claude I give those to it, so it mostly looks like what I envisioned, unless it suggests changes.

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

#256

Post by NoboruWataya »

brookst wrote: post #182
Schnitz wrote: post #166

Because people that enjoy programming for programming's sake don't want an LLM to do the programming for them - isn't it obvious? It's just like with any other hobby, people who like car racing created rules that force you to drive yourself, even though they'd get faster lap times with electronic driver aids. People who enjoy grappling created rules that force you to grapple, even though striking could win a fight fa…

This is true, but as usual nobody can agree on what "doing it yourself" means. Few cars are manual steering, manual brakes, manual transmission. Few grappling bodies go all Greek-naked. Few chess bodies forbid researching previous games or your opponent. The list is indeed endless, and every single person thinks they are using just the right amount of assistance; anything less is pointlessly difficult, anything more…

One of the great things about hobbies is that you can enjoy them whatever way you want. But honestly is it not more accurate to say that you are now a hobbyist prompter, rather than a hobbyist programmer? I get the "its just a tool" mentality and I guess LLMs can be used that way, but if you are not touching a line of code yourself then it seems less analogous to using power steering and more analogous to just taking a taxi.

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

#257

Post by skydhash »

rob74 wrote: post #243
fhd2 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice analysis! I would perhaps add that LLMs are pretty helpful at (2) in my experience, as long as you don't turn your brain off. (As a Google/SO replacement, mainly.) I have about three modes, working with LLMs: A) Just use them for (2), do (3) and (4) myself. B) Just use them for (2) and (3), but with very fine grained instructions - to the point where it barely saves me time. C) Use them for (2), (3) and (4), but…

Regarding (2) figuring out how to do things at a higher level (e.g. the general architecture of an application) is pretty different from figuring out things at a lower level (e.g. how to fill text with a certain gradient in CSS - the stuff where years ago you would have spent hours reading documentation or browsing StackOverflow until you figured it out, if you weren't familiar with the topic). So you could use an LL…

> the stuff where years ago you would have spent hours reading documentation or browsing StackOverflow until you figured it out, if you weren't familiar with the topic

Why is it always hours to consult docs? I find most answers within minutes (including if I have to read code) and it’s only take a bit longer when I want to understand the why’s.

The key is to make sure you have the right questions. I see people struggle with that where they only know something wrong but they can’t put it in words.

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

#258

Post by vidarh »

GPerson wrote: post #200

Programming is nice because you have lots of different scales of structure to think about, and your program slowly comes together. You see it improving over time as a result of your efforts. You also build your skills and learn. It’s really a nice activity. AI systems basically change that whole formula. I’m not sure how people get joy out of constantly vibe coding new projects. It feels like binge watching Netflix s…

> I’m not sure how people get joy out of constantly vibe coding new projects. It feels like binge watching Netflix shows.

I get joy out of it because it solves actual problems I have that I don't have time to solve manually, or don't want to. E.g. I just recently had Codex add a mechanism for two-level virtual desktops because I wanted groups of them. An hour later I had two-level virtual desktops in my wm that worked exactly how I wanted it, with support for it in my desktop switcher. I could write it myself, but why would I? I love writing code for various projects, but sometimes I just want the outcome.

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

#259

Post by iainmerrick »

alkonaut wrote: post #224

Programming has five phases effectively: 1) You figure out what problem to solve. 2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem. 3) You actually implement the solution. 4) You see the solution work, for yourself. 5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on. If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you s…

I really like that categorization, but I think you've missed a step (or several): designing and implementing all the extra stuff needed to make it work, but aren't directly related to the problem.

For example, you have an idea for a cool and useful app and you want to put it on a website. You need to figure out hosting, you need to write some copy, you need to do some visual design.

Maybe 3a) Yak shaving?

There are various ways to take shortcuts. For hosting, you can use something super easy like GitHub Pages or Netlify or Cloudflare, or maybe piggyback off an existing site that's already deployed. For both copy and visual design, you can just ask Claude or Codex to do it -- but only if you don't mind having that standard vibe-coded look and feel, all glowing gradients and punchy, mic-dropping text.

Maybe you're including that under 5), ship/deploy/publish, but I read that as being more about scaling, marketing, and making things robust. Even before you reach that stage there's always a bunch of bullshit to work through before you can even reach 4), seeing the solution work for yourself.

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

#260

Post by xboxnolifes »

didibus wrote: post #176
acedTrex wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So at least in my experience, it’s not about gatekeeping as much as it’s about keeping the experience bearable for the existing hobbyist community. Keeping the experience bearable BY gatekeeping. That is the point, gatekeeping is not inherently a bad thing. It's a required thing in many circles.

Is it gatekeeping in this case? Would they not allow beginners to join and learn? Are they not fully sharing the knowledge to anyone who's interested to learn it? To me, it amounts more to disapproving showing up to a handmade sweater community and showing off your machine made sweaters, or maybe a machine made sweater you added a handful of stitches too yourself. It's like not realizing that the community wasn't abo…

The term gatekeeping gets thrown around so much now that I feel like ive forgotten what it even means. What they are doing is having rules. All communities above a certain size need rules to maintain structure. Idk if that is or isnt gatekeeping, but it is definitely using rules to maintain their identity.
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