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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

#291

Post by bananaflag »

rob74 wrote: post #244
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…

True, but it sounded a bit paradoxical to me that the people who work on engines designed to beat humans at chess were themselves opposed to using engines that (arguably) beat humans at programming...

Exactly one of them threatens their lifestyle.

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

#292

Post by tonyedgecombe »

pjmlp wrote: post #273
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not really.

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

#293

Post by samiv »

When you take away the cost people will treat the result worthless.

For example if you hiking in the mountains, reaching the summit and enjoying the views are valuable experiences to you because it had an associated coast, i.e the physical act of hiking up the mountain. If you take the ski lift to the top it's almost worthless and you have very little appreciation for the views.

I don't see software being any different to this.

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

#294

Post by ThunderSizzle »

sharperguy wrote: post #283
draftsman wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing code without an LLM is akin to cooking a meal yourself, as opposed to something in between hiring a private chef and pulling a slot machine lever. When I cook a meal for myself or my loved ones, I become deeply familiar with the ingredients and the recipe. I am a good cook. Every decision, small and large, I make myself. Using feedback, I can tweak the components and the process. However, if I order food and…

I don't see it the same way. I see it as akin to building a machine which can do the cooking for you. There is a lot of experimentation in terms of how you can construct that machine and how you can set it up, and for some people the payoff is in exactly this process.

That's me. I've just moved the puzzle to figuring out the CC optimal "language" and mode of working with an LLM. At the same time, I haven't lost my love/expertise... Yet.

I explained it yesterday that it's no different than Linq powered by EF Core. You still need to understand the database and how SQL will work, or should. If you don't, you're queries will be slow and inefficient, hazardlessly oftentimes.

LLMs are an impressive abstraction, but they are not magic...yet. or maybe it is, but you still need to figure out the incantations. Not that I like to uptick and witchcraft, so I hate that analogy.

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

#295

Post by mcv »

trinix912 wrote: post #214
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.

I’m in Central Europe too and most cars are manuals. Must be just your neck of the woods. But I agree it’s a pointless debacle.

I think it's mostly the hybrids and EVs that are killing manual transmission. They were very common 20 years ago.

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

#296

Post by jgilias »

samiv wrote: post #293

When you take away the cost people will treat the result worthless. For example if you hiking in the mountains, reaching the summit and enjoying the views are valuable experiences to you because it had an associated coast, i.e the physical act of hiking up the mountain. If you take the ski lift to the top it's almost worthless and you have very little appreciation for the views. I don't see software being any differe…

Very apt comparison! This is how I feel too. In the sense that when I’m coding as a hobby, especially something like advent of code, using an LLM would defeat the purpose for me. A bit how I don’t double check my moves with an engine when playing chess online.

On the other hand though, if I’m being paid to build, say, the top station of a ski lift on a peak, I wouldn’t be surprised if the contractee would prefer I don’t try hiking up the building materials and used a helicopter instead.

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

#297

Post by darkwater »

alkonaut wrote: post #276
easyThrowaway wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tinkere…

It's your vision and you are completely free to have it, obviously, but you should not project it on every tinkerer out there - like you did in your initial message. Yours is actually an extreme position that's probably exacerbated by the digital and immaterial world, where you can accumulate cruft and unfinished projects easily. But many tinkerers, especially in the physical world, do projects to use them personally and not only for the sake of tinkering.

Many tinkerer projects in the physical world are actually maintenance work of physical appliances that are not working anymore as expected or can be extended to do more or better things.

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

#298

Post by estimator7292 »

bananaflag wrote: post #290
pigpop wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just old but people talking about being in programming for "status" or to be "highly regarded" really irks me. I'd rather see the entire field burnt to the ground and replaced by robots than to have it become a status profession like lawyering.

Could you elaborate? I think back in the 90s when I was a teenager I thought it to be a good thing that there is a rise in status for a class of people characterized by clear thinking.

[dead]

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

#299

Post by embedding-shape »

bananaflag wrote: post #290
pigpop wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just old but people talking about being in programming for "status" or to be "highly regarded" really irks me. I'd rather see the entire field burnt to the ground and replaced by robots than to have it become a status profession like lawyering.

Could you elaborate? I think back in the 90s when I was a teenager I thought it to be a good thing that there is a rise in status for a class of people characterized by clear thinking.

The older I get, the more I realize how many problems in society is because there are different "classes" of people. The more we can eschew that, the better it becomes for most people. While yes, I also see myself as having "clearer thinking" than many people , maybe because of the thousands of hours building and maintaining software, I'm not of the impression that my life deserves a higher status than others merely because of this. It's not "they think right and they think wrong", it's just "everyone thinks differently, but it's all valid thinking".

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

#300

Post by fithisux »

minimaxir wrote: post #23
podgietaru wrote: post #13

The article just straight up doesn't mention the context of the Github Thread, which is about the guy lifting ideas from other engines and copy-washing them. "Do you genuinely believe changes like cd170a4 make the code somehow not derived from Reckless anymore? It appears to me like it's just trying to obfuscate its origins, to make it easier to appeal to plausible deniability. The reality is, coda 100% has code deri…

The README ( https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda#license ) addresses concerns about copyright in good faith and better than most agentic-driven repos: > After our initial 0.9.0 pre-release (July 2026), community feedback raised that Coda contained AGPL-licensed code. This prompted a full audit of our codebase and dependencies, and steps to correct what it found. We now believe Coda complies with all applicable licenses…

Is the bank lending you money "in good faith"?
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