Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.fogus.me

441–450 of 557 posts

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

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s the difference. Using LLMs to learn how to write interesting code, I hope, would be welcomed. I’m not confident that’s true though, reading some of these comments.

I don't think anyone is learning to code by using LLMs. We learn a craft in two ways: by watching other people do something, and by doing it ourselves. I've learnt many crafts in my life, to the extent that I've produced useful or enjoyable output: programming, wood working, gardening, cooking, baking. I read loads of books, but nothing you read in a book makes much sense until you do it yourself. If you read a book…

I’ve learned tons since I started using LLMs. They’re an amazing tool for learning as long as you use them like that. Ask it questions about things you don’t understand. Verify the answers. Don’t have them do everything for you. Figure out where to push back on what they’re producing.

When I learned to code, learning from existing code was a big part of it. One difference now is you can produce custom code to learn from.

I’m starting to think the biggest skill we need to teach people in this new age is how to learn and how to research. If you already know how to do that well, LLMs are a fantastic addition to the toolbox. If you don’t, then you’re stuck with a tool that’s going to replace your skill instead of augment it.

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

#442
I disagree with the conclusion. I think this is only half of the story, and I can say so as one of the people in question who is largely against LLM code (despite finding LLMs to be very useful tools). While I do care about genuine care in one's craft, I also am a free software advocate and fundamentalist, and I find non-trivial LLM code is too legally and ethically dangerous to be included in software that is distributed to other people (do whatever you want if it's just personal use).

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

#443
post #350
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…

Nothing says engineer mindset like calling people "something wrong with them, perhaps on the spectrum of OCD. With a tinge of arrogance or narcissism" and "emotions and irrationality"

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

#444

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 thing with programming a computer is that the computer does exactly what you tell it to, so in order to implement something well you need to have a very deep understanding of the problem. And it's that understanding that is valuable.

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

#445
post #390

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 enjoy the process of solving problems with LLMs. I understand it's chaotic (what many people call non-deterministic), and that doesn't appeal to some people, but solving problems with statistics is problem solving just the same. Just because medicines don't work with 100% reliability doesn't mean Jonas Salk didn't solve a problem. The same is true with LLM solutions that don't work 100% of the time. I think most pe…

I don't think that should be an issue either way, especially if it is not production code and just a hobby thing.

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

#446
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy the process of solving problems with LLMs. I understand it's chaotic (what many people call non-deterministic), and that doesn't appeal to some people, but solving problems with statistics is problem solving just the same. Just because medicines don't work with 100% reliability doesn't mean Jonas Salk didn't solve a problem. The same is true with LLM solutions that don't work 100% of the time. I think most pe…

I don't think that should be an issue either way, especially if it is not production code and just a hobby thing.

Are you saying something being reliable is not a big deal? I'm sort of confused

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm having a blast "writing" software without touching a line of code. And that’s totally fine, enjoy your hobby however you enjoy it best. Most people programming by hand for fun don’t care that you program with an LLM for fun. The problems come when those two worlds collide, like in the linked GitHub issue, in chess engine leaderboards. In the long run for both groups to have their fun and friendly competition yo…

Sure, I agree, and it’s already figured out. The demoscene has been around for decades. That’s real programming. But I think you’re on to something important: framing programming as a competition of intrinsic skill where rules are necessary to equalize. That’s certainly true in some cases, and more power to those who enjoy it. I guess I’m just more of a product guy these days, where the equalizer is the market and th…

You never went to a programming competition in school? None of what was said is novel, it’s all been around forever, the tricky bit is the regurgitation software mucking everything up.

Not that it’s about me, but I was doing programming competitions 25 years ago, half of which were on paper with no keyboard allowed.

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

#448
Not quite the full truth:

In my free time; I'm iterating on programming ideas using coding agents.

For example a testing framework that separates test case definitions from instrumentation...

And the recent post on bento.page sent me down a path exploring different ideas around "X as standalone HTML+JS"...

And I don't care about shipping this; It's just for me.

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

#449
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

>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 I think people underestimate just how much users scorn buggy, flaky technology. The main issue with solid, reliable technology which Just Works is that users have relatively few reliable cues to distinguish that from vibe coded crap. A vibe coded piece of shit…

> I think people underestimate just how much users scorn buggy, flaky technology.

Users do hate it, but they are also very used to being forced to use it anyway. They've already been beaten into a state of resignation and learned helplessness. Most will curse under the breath, a small fraction will bitch about it online, but they'll all pay for whatever slop is thrown to them and will rarely look for alternatives even when they are free and easy to find.

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

#450
post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

I'm not concerned. Never in my life have I experienced stakeholders just going "hmm, yes - this is enough software for our purposes - we won't be needing your services any more". There's always another feature that can be implemented or a new problem to be solved. Tools only ever accelerated the pace at which we were able to follow this insatiable hunger for more software. Right now people are getting fired left and…

Also, give it another couple of years and there's going to be a lot of work for any moderately experienced developer fixing broken slopcode hitting the hard wall of bad design.
Post reply on HN