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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

#371

Post by olzhasar »

stackghost wrote: post #355
Nextgrid wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. Plenty of shitty spaghetti code has been written by human hands. LLMs can write good, maintainable code too, but they need to be kept on a shorter leash with focused goals.

While that might be true, the more one equips LLMs for building the less one will be capable of keeping LLMs “on a shorter leash with focused goals” in the long run

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

#372

Post by derektank »

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.

We would all die in a week if we went without water, yet water is cheaper per gallon than gasoline or printer ink or perfume. It’s a question of scarcity and supply curves. Water, even clean water, is not particularly scarce if you leverage industrial systems to purify it. Other products require much more complicated supply chains and are produced at a much smaller scale than water, which makes them more rarer and more expensive.

The skills necessary to develop efficient and effective software are much more scarce than those needed to remove trash, or pick crops, or provide elder care. That’s why the former is paid so much more.

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

#373

Post by GPerson »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #358
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. What? It's the simplest thing in the world. You get the product. Isn't that the point of all programming? You want a thing and you speak a magic incantation and then you have the thing, to keep and use. > even if this thing is any good, someone with real capital can just direct a future AI at it to take it from me, so I’m not really gaining…

Well I used to imagine I’d make a business out of the thing. I also would sometimes think the thing could give me professional opportunities.

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

#374

Post by FeepingCreature »

GPerson wrote: post #373
FeepingCreature wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not sure how people get joy out of constantly vibe coding new projects. What? It's the simplest thing in the world. You get the product. Isn't that the point of all programming? You want a thing and you speak a magic incantation and then you have the thing, to keep and use. > even if this thing is any good, someone with real capital can just direct a future AI at it to take it from me, so I’m not really gaining…

Well I used to imagine I’d make a business out of the thing. I also would sometimes think the thing could give me professional opportunities.

Sure. I do agree that AI is a problem in this sense: programmer skill as a hiring differentiator is becoming a lot less legible these days. It just feels personally odd to be the reason you do the thing. When I encountered my first programmable computer I very quickly realized that I wanted to do more of it, and not too much later that this was the thing I would spend the rest of my life doing. That it was also very commercializable, I have always considered as a kind of happy accident.

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

#376

Post by GPerson »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #374
GPerson wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I used to imagine I’d make a business out of the thing. I also would sometimes think the thing could give me professional opportunities.

Sure. I do agree that AI is a problem in this sense: programmer skill as a hiring differentiator is becoming a lot less legible these days. It just feels personally odd to be the reason you do the thing. When I encountered my first programmable computer I very quickly realized that I wanted to do more of it, and not too much later that this was the thing I would spend the rest of my life doing. That it was also very…

That’s my experience, starting at 10 years old and trying to figure out how the the moving pictures were in the screen.

I didn’t say that was the reason though. A person has a lot of wants and needs right?

I’m not following why it’s strange to want to be skilled and engage with the craft itself based on that part of the message to be honest. Maybe I’m misunderstanding.

I tried to convey in my first post that I’m gonna keep programming for no material gain and no way of producing anything of value for others. I am worried about how I’ll support myself but this thread is about the hobby.

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

#377

Post by _luci_ »

jatora wrote: post #350
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 mar…

I think you missed the entire point of this discussion, but you also have a very gross view of the world!

> 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. Are you really saying it is a sign of serious mental illness because programmers want to enjoy their craft? You do realize our entire industry exists because of the passion of programmers years prior, right? I genuinely think you should be ashamed of what you wrote here.

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

#378

Post by GTP »

Tanoc wrote: post #360
GTP wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 numbe…

From having worked with farmers, the actual logistics of running a farm are very complex. Farming's no longer an easy job because the demand for productivity means you have to harness a whole stable of technologies and understand to some degree advanced finances, floral biology, geotechnics, and meteorology. And yet farmers still get paid little relative to the breadth of knowledge and skills required for running a f…

You're right, running now a farm that is profitable and can stay on the market is very different from doing so 200 years ago. But knowledge is just one aspect. The other aspect I mentioned is having less people in the field than what the market asks for. In the specific case of farmers, I think that modern farms are so much more efficient that we need way less than before, even if the world's population grew. So, while there's a gap between the knowledge required and the earnings, I think this can be explained by farms having a much greater output now, and so the market doesn't ask for more farms than what we have. This could be false at a global scale, but I think it is true at a country-level scale in most of the developed countries. Hence why farmers aren't paid much in those countries.

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

#379

Post by _luci_ »

frozenseven wrote: post #375

LLM-first development is the future. If you don't like it then, yes, you should quit.

Yeah you're right, it IS entirely fair to suddenly and quickly push the group that built your industry out of the industry. They should all just find new jobs, because that's very easy and simple. Thankfully we have bright minds like you to replace the talent lost, because with AI you can truly do anything your heart desires!

Obvious sarcasm aside, these LLMs have been trained (without consent!) on our hard work, on our passion. People have been writing code for years, and many have open-sourced their projects to share their knowledge, to better the world, to provide free solutions to problems. All that hard work, all that effort, has been stolen and used to create a machine that replaces us. And when we complain that quality goes down, that work is no longer enjoyable, that we don't actually see huge noticable productivity improvements across the board, bright minds like you tell us "lol just quit man fuck you". Do you not feel bad that you are actively destroying the livelihood of the very people that made your slop machine viable to build?

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