Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.fogus.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 559 posts

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

#271

Post by Planktonne »

wincy wrote: post #54
thunfischtoast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think, without knowing, that art often is similar to the hobby programming communities the thread leads with: the end result is interesting not by itself, but through the process that made it. We have feelings about art pieces because we feel with and through the artist. Can't do that with silicon. The Mona Lisa, even if the end result were exactly the same, would be dead boring had it been produced by the hand of…

Totally disagree. I just want cool pictures hanging on my wall. If they’re totally unique and nobody else has them, even better. I can have a mounted picture of me on a horse like the famous Napoleon painting. I don’t care at all about the dude who painted it, I don’t even know his name. The only exception is real photographs of some event, like I bought my friend a picture of the Falcon 9 taking off against the back…

No one is stopping you doing that, but you probably aren't someone who should go dominate discussion in a hobbyist arts group.

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

#272

Post by TeriyakiBomb »

danielbln wrote: post #262
TeriyakiBomb wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But LLM usage isn’t equivalent to power steering, it’s what a full kitchen is to a microwave. You can sure put effort into a microwave meal but it’ll always work against you and much of the time you’re better off just picking up a pan. Not to diminish your enjoyment, you’re completely entitled to it, I just think this is a bit of a false equivalence

An LLM is more akin to a staffed pro kitchen than a microwave.

Agents are effectively a full McDonalds kitchen, yes.

...and yes, I know you don't mean that. I just disagree.

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

#273

Post by pjmlp »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #209
pjmlp wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Few cars are manual steering, manual brakes, manual transmission. Tell me you are not in European or African continent without telling me.

In Europe you would be hard pressed to find a car without power steering or assisted brakes.

Still plenty to acquire around in second hand.

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

#274

Post by pjmlp »

danielbln wrote: post #210
pjmlp wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Few cars are manual steering, manual brakes, manual transmission. Tell me you are not in European or African continent without telling me.

I'm in Central Europe and there aren't many manual transmissions around anymore where I am. But if you paint with a brush of two entire continents, you might paint a little too broadly.

Unless you are driving an EV, or lucky to own Audi, Volvo, BMW or Mercedes top class of vehicle, most people are on manual.

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

#275

Post by Ekaros »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #256
brookst wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What I really don't understand how differently it seems that AI for programming and for anything else is treated.

I don't think there is insignificant group who would say that using LLM to write a book does not make you an author. Or make a song musician. Or draw a picture a painter or artist.

This just somewhat baffles me... Or maybe the LLM for programming people all believe that you are as much artist if you use AI in those fields and the product generates as such is as if not more valuable than one by more traditional means.

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

#276

Post by alkonaut »

easyThrowaway wrote: post #266
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…

The type of problem also makes a massive difference. - Writing my tiny hobby gameboy emulator? Heck, Why I'd let Claude take away the fun part of implementing new features and then see Super Mario Land start and run step by step? - Debugging why a legacy Wordpress store with more than 50 active plugins is returning an error 500 just to some random customers? Claude can 100% take the wheel, I'm good.

Here's where the important difference is: unless you actually finished the wordpress thing, or ever had active users etc, it would never have become a maintenance burden. If it's not fun to maintain, I burn it.

For me, the reason I don't have that is because I never ship anything. I never want to maintain that. I never cared about solving an _actual_ business problem, making a dollar, or pleasing a user. As a tinkerer I must be extremely careful not to end up completing or delivering anything. Only pain lies down that path...

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

#277

Post by kypro »

shiomiru wrote: post #251
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 (…

This is unfortunately just the result of technological progress. People for centuries have crafted extremely hard to acquire skills over decades only to find their labour being made completely worthless due to automation or better alternatives disrupting their industry.

Carpenters, hatters, cobblers, miners, weavers, calculators, etc...

We can get mad about it, but it just is what it is. Ultimately for most people the loss of these jobs are a net-benefit because it's the result of better or cheaper alternatives.

The thing that worries me more specifically about AI is that it has the potential not to just disrupt an industry, or handful of industries, but in theory everything.

If machines are faster, strong, and more intelligent than humans, then you don't need human workers for anything. In the same way machines suddenly becoming faster and stronger than horses meant that the role of the horse in labour dropped rapidly during the industrial revolution.

It's not clear how civilisation functions if humans become effectively useless and the only thing of value is one's ownership of wealth producing assets.

Still, there's really no point in thinking about how we stop this. Humans are humans and we'll do the stupid thing then try to deal with the consequences after the fact. All regular people should be doing now is prepping for this outcome.

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

#278

Post by iso1631 »

pjmlp wrote: post #204
brookst wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Few cars are manual steering, manual brakes, manual transmission. Tell me you are not in European or African continent without telling me.

My 21 year old car in the uk has power steering, and it was low end when new

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

#279

Post by inigyou »

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…

> anything less is pointlessly difficult, anything more is cheating that takes the sport out.

https://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox

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

#280

Post by iso1631 »

pjmlp wrote: post #274
danielbln wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Central Europe and there aren't many manual transmissions around anymore where I am. But if you paint with a brush of two entire continents, you might paint a little too broadly.

Unless you are driving an EV, or lucky to own Audi, Volvo, BMW or Mercedes top class of vehicle, most people are on manual.

In the UK, it's about 30% automatic on the road, but automatics have outsold manuals for years and about 80% of new cars sold today are automatic.
Post reply on HN