Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.fogus.me

451–460 of 559 posts

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

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this. If only I properly remembered and agreed on what I wanted to do yesterday it would be fantastic. Even if I write it down and happen to remember to check the notes, it’s almost like I was a different person yesterday, todays priorities are all new

> Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this. Don't know the tests you refer to, but it's recognized that many adults have ADHD symptoms not quite meeting DSM-5 criteria for ADHD. It's called "subsyndromal" ADHD which causes as much disability and responds to treatment just as well as "full" ADHD cases. IOW it's absurd to regard someone with 6 symptoms as belong…

[deleted]

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

#452
post #277

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 (…

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 th…

> 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.

AI will not give us that result. It will give us shitty products and they will be far more costly. Not only will prices for consumers continue to rise regardless of how much money corporations save by using AI (because they'll just stuff their pockets with that cash) but the true costs of AI are largely externalized and include things like massive environmental damage, further concentration of wealth/power, the homogenization of culture, and the dumbing down of society. AI means paying more and getting less.

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

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this. If only I properly remembered and agreed on what I wanted to do yesterday it would be fantastic. Even if I write it down and happen to remember to check the notes, it’s almost like I was a different person yesterday, todays priorities are all new

> Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this. Don't know the tests you refer to, but it's recognized that many adults have ADHD symptoms not quite meeting DSM-5 criteria for ADHD. It's called "subsyndromal" ADHD which causes as much disability and responds to treatment just as well as "full" ADHD cases. IOW it's absurd to regard someone with 6 symptoms as belong…

Thanks, I know I could probably get a diagnosis and treatment for it. However, to be honest I kind of like it! I think it keeps me on a different path wrt most people, so until it becomes a serious problem (financially) I’ll keep riding the waves of focus and distraction ;)

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

#454
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take already painted warhammer figurines, pose them, take a photo, prompt an AI to make that your first scene, and generate a hollywood level scene in about a minute or two. Yes, sure, you can buy the figurine and get the joy of painting it. But there's new things you can do now too, things you couldn't dream about before. But I'll grant you this, the AI coding extinction event is so severe that I do believe…

> You can take already painted warhammer figurines, pose them, take a photo, prompt an AI to make that your first scene, and generate a hollywood level scene in about a minute or two. if that's so awesome then why isn't everybody doing it? I never dreamt about stuff like that, but are there actually people who are like "oh thank God I can finally make my AI movies with my figurines and other stuff I have laying aroun…

People are doing it, but not that much, because while it generates some pretty good five-second scenes, it fails terribly at generating any long-form video. And by long-form, I mean 'longer than 30 seconds'.

I think what people want is to tell a story that's in their imagination, and no current AI is up to that task (at least in video format). Great for making an animated PNG for a meme, but not for adapting that fanfic you are writing.

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agents are effectively a full McDonalds kitchen, yes. ...and yes, I know you don't mean that. I just disagree.

> Agents are effectively a full McDonalds kitchen, yes. You just insulted everybody that works at McDonalds.

You’re right. I apologise

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

#457
post #361

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…

This is a good analogy. Also I hate cooking; it feels like a chore and waste of time. Given the means, I prefer to have someone else do it for me so I can focus on more interesting things.

If the analogy is good, does it mean AI boosters hate programming, and feel like it's a chore and waste of time? Yet they keep calling themselves programmers.

I dislike cooking; I don't call myself a chef, nor go on cooking forums saying they're all idiots for churning butter as a hobby, and telling them they are luddite dinosaurs just because I bought myself an Instant Pot.

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

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every craftsman I know expresses discomfort that the only way they can turn a profit is to sell goods to wealthy people.

That seems odd. I'd rather turn a profit selling goods to people who can easily afford them than selling goods to people who will have to make hard choices or struggle to find the money.

That's one way to spin it. The other is that good quality things have become so low-demand and expensive due to barely-passable-quality things becoming so cheap, that people buying good quality things is now ironically more uneconomical than ever.

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

#459
Very interesting stuff, and I believe the prejeduce against AI tools for use to code stems from the way they are currently package. The tools default out of the box are designed to throw away the most valuable process humans go through while learning, FAILURE!

If a human is never able to work through or process failures themselves they are bypassing one of the most important steps in the learning journey

More AI tools need to be made the opposite of this, humans should be able to achieve great learning USING AI.

The important message also remains, understand your code! It might just save you one day ;)

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

#460
post #426

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) You actually implement the solution. even for an entrepreneur type - you need to understand the technology to get to good enough solution e.g if you don't know shit & just accepted what the llm gave you - u might end up with an unmaintainable mess. the llm might recommend you use some proprietary solution when an open source solution exists that works well for your use case. plus llms tend to be wordy or make th…

Many entrepreneurial types will just market the shit out of unmaintainable messes fast enough to IPO so they can get their bag all the same.
Post reply on HN