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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

#491

Post by hunterpayne »

GTP wrote: post #344
embedding-shape wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 numbe…

"The basic services that keep us alive (e.g. farmers producing our food) tend to also be "easy""

The reason you think that is that you know nothing about agriculture. But it isn't true. Right now, farmers in the US grow about 5x as much food per acre as farmers in other countries. If you were in charge of farming in the US, that surplus would likely disappear in a single season. You would also likely damage the soil which would make cleaning up after you take 4-6 years.

Everyone thinks things they know nothing about are easy. But they rarely are.

PS This is why I never tell people I'm a programmer. I don't want to be associated with people who think like you.

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

#492

Post by hunterpayne »

win311fwg wrote: post #433
pigpop wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers aren't really paid, they sell goods at market prices. Modern farms are more similar to operating a manufacturing business than they are to a salaried position or profession. They don't earn high incomes compared to white collar professions but they do have high revenues and they pay themselves a reasonable middle class income on average with some added benefits from owning large assets and land. The important…

> Farmers aren't really paid, they sell goods at market prices. "Programmers aren't really paid, they sell services at market prices." — I guess nobody gets paid? As a farmer myself, when I give someone something I produced and they give me back something in return, I consider myself to be paid. If I did not receive much value in return for what I gave, I'd reasonably consider myself to have not been paid well. I hav…

Did someone seriously just down-mod a farmer in a sub-discussion about running a farm?

PS To the "clear-thinking" guy at the top of this thread...this is why...you only think your thinking is clear. If its a topic you know nothing about, devs (not necessarily you) tend to assume there isn't anything to know and that's almost never true.

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

#493

Post by jrapdx3 »

madmask wrote: post #453
jrapdx3 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ;)

Of course, it's always entirely up to you. But wise to stay alert to documented ADHD effects, e.g., on social functioning, general health, increased risk of accidental injury, depression, anxiety, to name a few. In any case, treatment won't undo the uniqueness of your path, if anything likely to augment reaching goals your path leads to.

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

#494

Post by [deleted] »

ddq wrote: post #478
throwitaway222 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why call it a plagiarism machine but not call other (pre-ai) programmers plagiarism machines?

Because it is a machine and a person is not. Those who don't understand or deny that difference are part of the problem. But for those who would insist on equivalence, it would be only fair to take them at their word and treat them as inhuman machines who must follow human instructions or be shut down. We're allowed to do thing to machines we could never do to people, like forcing them to work or cannibalizing their…

[deleted]

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

#495

Post by hunterpayne »

overgard wrote: post #486
_luci_ wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed, especially that last line. What I do not understand is why so many people are entirely okay with this change. I'm not interested in working with LLM's and after having been forced to work with LLM's at my current job, I can pretty confidently say that this will not end well for most of these companies. The people in charge pushing for this new tech do not understand the rammifications, nor do they unders…

My suspicion is that the people "ok" with this are mostly doing so because they want in on the ride. IE, they see $$$ and they think that they should align themselves to where the money is, especially by espousing their religious faith publicly. I think some people want investment, or a big paid lab job, and so countering the narrative is against that goal. I get it, but I think it's also very annoying and dishonest.…

That and a large amount of bots operated by people with a financial interest in LLMs succeeding.

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

#496

Post by inigyou »

somenameforme wrote: post #440
hlynurd wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're explaining how things are but the parent is indicating that's not how things should be.

He's not describing how but why . And at a fundamental level it's something that can't be overcome. If you can only have 10 of one thing, yet can have 5000 of another, and both have even remotely comparable levels of demand/necessity/etc, then the 10 is always going to end up much more valued. Even take some sort of idealized anarcho-communal society. Imagine two people have a dispute and threaten to leave over it. O…

A society with no garbage collected will fall apart much more quickly than one without healthcare.

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

#497

Post by inigyou »

hunterpayne wrote: post #492
win311fwg wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Farmers aren't really paid, they sell goods at market prices. "Programmers aren't really paid, they sell services at market prices." — I guess nobody gets paid? As a farmer myself, when I give someone something I produced and they give me back something in return, I consider myself to be paid. If I did not receive much value in return for what I gave, I'd reasonably consider myself to have not been paid well. I hav…

Did someone seriously just down-mod a farmer in a sub-discussion about running a farm? PS To the "clear-thinking" guy at the top of this thread...this is why...you only think your thinking is clear. If its a topic you know nothing about, devs (not necessarily you) tend to assume there isn't anything to know and that's almost never true.

Did you seriously just appeal to authority yourself?

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

#498

Post by inigyou »

win311fwg wrote: post #473
arzig wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What he means to say is that because you are a farmer you are a member of the capital holding classes rather than the lumpen proletariat.

Most programmers are of the capital holding class too. At very least they will own a computer, which is all the capital you need for 99% of what programmers do. There are exceptions, but there are also exceptions in farming.

The capital holding class isn't anyone who holds capital. It's anyone whose main function in society is based on holding capital. Think of a landlord.

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

#499

Post by stackghost »

Nextgrid wrote: post #416
stackghost wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I'm not talking about code quality (though indeed that could be a problem too), I'm talking about understanding the code - having written the code by hand means you don't need to rediscover it from scratch. (with human-written code I can reach out to the person who wrote it and let them deal with it, and they will have the understanding of said code, even if it is bad by quality measures. With LLMs there is nobody wh…

>having written the code by hand means you don't need to rediscover it from scratch.

Hard disagree. If you're in a small-to-medium size codebase every day, then sure, but I have a couple personal projects that are complex enough that even though I wrote them before LLMs, I still need to go back and discover/fumble around before I can confidently make changes.

I have definitely looked at my own hand-written code and had a "wtf does this even do" moment.

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

#500

Post by inigyou »

cvwright wrote: post #472
pydry wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Where are these well engineered products made with care? I would love to use more tech like that. Unfortunately most sites and apps have been low quality and getting worse since well before AI coding became a thing. Examples: Lowes, Home Depot, American Airlines - all shockingly bad for companies of that size.

A lot of infrastructure. Linux (despite the recent VM escapes found with AI assistance). nginx. openssh. coreutils. Is all solid but also just operates the computer and doesn't actually solve any problem itself.
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