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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

#341

Post by armchairhacker »

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…

In the past I’ve experimented with many different programming paradigms. I think my AI coding benefits from that experience. I want to find new paradigms to write extensible, modular systems with AI, a problem that is still open. One thing I’ve learned is that when implementing a complex system, no paradigm eliminates the need to write lots code (covering many ugly edge-cases) tests, which previously required lots of boring, slow work, but AI is very good at that so maybe can make it less boring and faster.

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

#342

Post by Nextgrid »

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…

This is also missing step 6: when your solution breaks in production or needs to be extended.

Having done step 2 & 3 by hand is the difference between being able to fix/extend it quickly with no further damage or fumbling around like an idiot and sometimes breaking more stuff in the process.

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

#343

Post by acedTrex »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #144
acedTrex wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wer…

> 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

Yes and many programmers who came up in the 80s or early 90s writing C or equivalent decry these tools as ruining XYZ thing. LLMs are the same effect just on steroids

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

#344

Post by GTP »

embedding-shape wrote: post #317
elmer2 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all should be in the same 'class', but some people will be paid more for a job that takes intelligence or years of study. The older I get, I realize some people never change, will always have the same backwards or harmful thinking, and I avoid them instead of just accepting it.

> some people will be paid more for a job that takes intelligence or years of study. Sadly, it seems so, even if the effects of the jobs on daily life differ a great deal sometimes. The world would succumb faster if we had no garbage collectors, yet they get less pay than a programmer who the world could easily survive without? Makes no sense to me.

The basic services that keep us alive (e.g. farmers producing our food) tend to also be "easy" (it is physically demanding, but doesn't require years of study to start and you quickly learn by doing). This also means that the vast majority of people would be able to do this kind of jobs. Our economy pays more for scarcity, i.e. jobs that are in demand and at the same time require more qualification, so that the number of people needed in that position tends to be less than the current amount. Both views have sense, they just start from two different points.

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

#345

Post by riddlemethat »

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…

Best explanation I’ve seen. I’m an entrepreneur type. I would fall asleep after two hours of coding to solve a problem. I still remember 100 hours of coding to facilitate a data import into a new application only to realize half my time was wasted because the import library we were using back then didn’t support UTF data (this was a SQL-92 database). I love using an LLM to do the coding.

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

#346

Post by Applejinx »

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #164

It's because they fetishize arcane knowledge and LLMs make all their arcane knowledge easy. That's all it is. If I wanted to go make my own NES game from scratch 2 years ago it would have taken months of full time work, and I would have had to learn a lot of new things, and most likely would have joined and participated in that community. Now I can do it this afternoon. I'm not going to because it's pointless now, yo…

If the things you're thinking about are intrinsically so totally worthless outside of impressing people with them, and if that's all there is, please do not attempt to do those things, with or without an LLM.

Heck, if everything is worthless, please, please try not to do anything :)

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

#347

Post by 27183 »

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.

I would not characterize software people as particularly "clear-thinking".. there's a huge buzzing cloud of unexamined cognitive biases and thoughtless herd behavior that swirls around every software organization I've worked for.

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

#348

Post by randusername »

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…

3.5) You decide what evidence you need to see to convince yourself it works

6) You maintain the program with architectural gymnastics as time eats away at the utility and relevance and user base of what you originally built

Both of these activities cause a night-and-day perspective change the next time through the loop

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

#350

Post by jatora »

xakpc wrote: post #212

The entire AI-pilled side-software development has a single goal: shipping as fast and as much as possible. The problem is that it’s not better code or a better product—it's just more I can understand why people who aren't interested in "shipping daily" and are more interested in figuring things out are kinda annoyed by all the LLM noise

Imagine, if you will, wanting a narrow application to assist you personally in some side hobby, that is data driven but would take weeks or months to set up. Now imagine it's done in hours (and not even purely focused hours) and does everything you need it to do in an instantly verifiable and rewarding way. Imagine doing this on the regular for all of your various use cases. And then imagine not trying to sell or market that tool, as you dont care about that, you only care about solving problems and empowering yourself.

The vast majority of developers are like this, and as such, are silent about it. They aren't making production applications. They're making bespoke solutions and iterating upon them over time.

Somehow purists think there's something wrong with the process of that. I say there's something wrong with them, perhaps on the spectrum of OCD. With a tinge of arrogance or narcissism thinking their applications are all of the purest order and construction, testaments to architectural beauty and edge case handling. With a tinge of fear and cope as so much of their identity is caught up in being a smart coder rather than a smart engineer.

If you are a software developer and don't see the value in and heavily utilize agentic tools, you are a poor engineer. Not every coder has the mindset of an engineer, but a coder should be able to recognize and understand a powerful tool when they see one instead of letting their emotions and irrationality take the wheel

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