Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by r_lee » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 9:41 AM UTC

orangedog wrote: post #365

r_lee wrote: 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. 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…

What's the point of being this rude? People are doing things like this, you just have to look around YouTube. This is what I don't like about the anti stance, it's just so often dismissive when people are excited about something.

he's talking about building museums for programming languages due to the "coding extinction event" and how you can make "Hollywood level scenes" with your figurines and that it's time to give up the joys of painting them and instead just prompt all day.

am I wrong to be dismissive of this? I mean seriously, if you read the post again it just seems so dystopian

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

#532

Post by gliall_err » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 12:12 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #428

gliall_err wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sophomoric oversimplification. The US and Europe might have lost a lot of craftsmanship knowledge at a social level. Yet, what is left is so far ahead of what has ever existed in countries in South America for example. And China has gained a lot. Witness that youtuber trying to make grill brushes in the US. These differences have an impact in terms of opportunities and competition. It's easy to sit at home,…

> Craftsmanship today is vastly more advanced than it ever was before industry. yes, but no. Many craft skills used in jewelry, architecture and others are lost. For example, some goldsmithing techniques well-known in the 1700s are not reproducible today. source: trained goldsmith

And how much of today's craftsmanship would be impossible one, two or three centuries ago?

There has never been as much craftsmanship as today. The idea that industry destroyed craftsmanship is a caricature. Modern industry was built on top of deep craftsmanship traditions and only enriched them.

The fact that some things that we knew how to do centuries ago we no longer know how to do is by no means evidence to the contrary.

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

#533

Post by gliall_err » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 12:18 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #314

gliall_err wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sophomoric oversimplification. The US and Europe might have lost a lot of craftsmanship knowledge at a social level. Yet, what is left is so far ahead of what has ever existed in countries in South America for example. And China has gained a lot. Witness that youtuber trying to make grill brushes in the US. These differences have an impact in terms of opportunities and competition. It's easy to sit at home,…

> Look closer and you'll see that what happened in the UK in the 1700s was in fact enabled by a long and deep tradition of craftsmanship that only got enriched by the rise of new power sources. Craftsmanship today is vastly more advanced than it ever was before industry. I suspect the horses are healthier and stronger than in the 1700s too. I'm not sure I understand your point? I'd agree that the niche of extremely h…

You're missing the forest for the trees.

Horse population today is in line with the long term average. There was a freak bump from 1850-1920.

Think about this question: is it harder today or 200 years ago for the average person to learn and ride horses?

Same goes for craftsmanship: is it harder today or 200 years ago to find some highly skilled craftsman to do something a random people or organization might fancy getting done?

And software. We may be in the freak bump of software engineers. Seven digits seems like a good guess. Maybe we will revert to a long term average proportion of people with affinity for math and logic. But you bet your horse (heh) that in 200 years it will be far easier for the average person to find some highly skilled software craftsman to do some niche work than it has ever been. Average quality of corporate slop generated by flesh or silicon drones notwithstanding.

Society and the economy will go on growing more complex. Whatever anyone can picture or design in their heads about the reality of things can never approach the real world complexity and variety. And by whatever metric you may choose, the complexity and variety of skills and capabilities in human civilization will go on growing.

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

#534

Post by inigyou » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 12:42 PM UTC

win311fwg wrote: post #518

inigyou wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Land isn't traditionally considered capital. The buckets are normally land, labor, and capital. The closest thing we broadly see to someone whose function is holding capital is someone who owns stock in the stock market. It is likely that most programmers own stock. If I were a betting man, I expect that programmers have more impact on capital than farmers do. But we still have to split hairs over what "main" means.…

Land is capital in today's economic structure. But if that bothers you, think of Elon Musk instead.

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

#535

Post by poetaster » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 1:00 PM UTC

djtango wrote: post #183

fenprace wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People programme for 2 reasons: 1. Some programme because it’s the one of 2 ways to get the things they want (another way is hiring a team to code for them). Now that they have vibe coding, they’d happily never touch a line of code again. 2. Other people programmes because they just enjoy it. Vibe coding ruins the best part for them. Like telling a foodie, "Good news! I built a robot to eat your food for you." Most p…

Hobby should only become job if you enjoy the craft of it and if the profession / job rewards craftsmanship. People in it just for the money won't care about craft - you see the same thing in plumbing. And when there's enough money and scale on the line, craft becomes progressively more niche - that is why Ikea furniture is a thing. And you can even say that there is craft in Ikea, just not along the axes a tradition…

Well, sometimes it's not a choice you have. I am arguably still a hobby programmer, but was forced by circumstance to go pro. I could not earn enough in graphic design to fix my teeth. Still managed to retain my love for the underlying mathematical (lambda calculs) and do to this day. I was always an enthusiast even as a manager. Now I do volunteer FOSS maint on numerous projects. Some embedded, most Linux phone adjacent. A circle.

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

#536

Post by win311fwg » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #534

win311fwg wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land isn't traditionally considered capital. The buckets are normally land, labor, and capital. The closest thing we broadly see to someone whose function is holding capital is someone who owns stock in the stock market. It is likely that most programmers own stock. If I were a betting man, I expect that programmers have more impact on capital than farmers do. But we still have to split hairs over what "main" means.…

Land is capital in today's economic structure. But if that bothers you, think of Elon Musk instead.

You are not technically wrong that our modern technology has made it possible for land to be capital, like when you dredged the sea floor to build an island, but is a tiny, insignificant portion of all the land. If you are under the impression someone needs a lesson in economics, what are the chances that they are going to think you are talking about some man-made island in Dubai rather than the natural ground that makes up the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of earth? For that explanation to land the audience would, in most cases, need an even deeper understanding of economics than the level you were trying to present.

Isn't Elon Musk's main function in society court jester — to make a fool of himself for our entertainment? That is what he does in my timeline. Perhaps we exist in different universes.

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

#537

Post by poetaster » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

hgoel wrote: post #58

I was somewhat conflicted seeing the way the OSdev community responds to LLM usage. I understand the conflict: the point of doing OSdev is that you're learning the low level hardware details and directly commanding the machine from the lowest level accessible. LLM usage is at odds with this. But, on the other hand, the primary issue with OSdev on modern hardware is the complete lack of documentation for most hardware…

I'll agree as a 90% typist dev. There is a certain class of problems I've sovled for a dozen times. And as often forgotten. Mostly parsing. Recently, I had a local qwen just build data (from html) because I wanted to concentrate on the code that ingests it. Win win. In the end, I thought the python it used a bit verbose so I might return to it to flex some awk muscles, but in the moment, I could focus on the code I wanted to write.

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

#538

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

GPerson wrote: post #409

FeepingCreature wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! And now the mod has fixed input events, I can actually have a proper configuration GUI for this, and I could I suppose write a GUI toolkit for the nth time, but it kind of feels like the sort of thing that's barely cool the first time, lol. And I already know if I let Sonnet or Opus do it, it'll work fine after the third try or so, and what's more it's going to look a lot better. And I'll enjoy using it every t…

Another strict positive I’ve had with AI is having it figure out how to deal with bureaucracy. This is dangerous due to privacy issues, but I was seriously depressed for a period, felt like I could not do it, and the AI figured out which agency I had to contact and how to contact them etc… to do some imminently important thing, and if this thing wasn’t done I would have been in serious trouble. I don’t care to know h…

[deleted]

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

#539

Post by yunwal » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

thesz wrote: post #529

yunwal wrote: 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…

> The same is true with LLM solutions that don't work 100% of the time. In my experience, about one of ten LLM suggestions during code review is important and valid . Nine of ten are either unimportant or not valid. Yet, I have to read them and rule them out. Also in my experience, having my colleagues do root cause analysis (RCA) with LLM brings to me invalid RCAs which I have to rule out, instead of working on find…

> Nine of ten are either unimportant or not valid. Yet, I have to read them and rule them out

You don't have to do this? Maybe someone is making you, but it's literally possible to just stop using LLMs for purposes where they fail reliably.

I'm also not sure what the point of the keto story is. Are you saying the Polio Vaccine does not work?

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

#540

Post by ryan_n » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

vasco wrote: post #215

dgellow wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And LLMs are what make so many jobs feel repetitive and brainless. Jobs that were engaging, interesting, from which people were learning, developing expertise over time, are now prompting + babysitting agents

The point is most people's jobs are like that. So it doesn't matter how interesting it was or that who did it before doesn't like it anymore because there's a queue of people lined up to do the brainless new version of the job.

Why would it not matter? Maybe it doesn't matter to you that you have to spend your life doing brainless miserable work, but a lot of people don't like or want that.

Just because "a lot of people experience x awful thing" doesn't mean "it doesn't matter that programming is now x awful thing because a lot of people experience that". That makes no sense.