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

#541

Post by a34729t » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

Im just not convinced that prompting is faster for many programming tasks than writing it myself, when considering the downstream effect on the next task on the same codebase.

If I write it myself, I know the interfaces will be solid and duplication will be the minimum necessary. Ill know why i did everything and there will be comments that explain anything tricky. The next time i need to work on this particular code, Ill have a good idea of where to start and I can similarly produce high quality code that is easy to read.

The way I see many "engineers" at work use LLMs is as an interface on top of anything, copy and pasting log lines into it, task descriptions, and yanking (as someone else put it) on the slot machine lever until they have something that works. It seems faster in the moment, but there is no understanding being built, which is as important as the code being produced. Next time the engineer is asked about the code, they just ask the LLM. So what exactly does this person do then to bring value to their job?

The LLMs can produce tight code if held on a tight leash, but they encourage the slot machine model. So maybe a harness that encourages starting from interfaces/etc? Either way the long term code quality and system functionality seem to favor a strong engineering team vs LLMs and some prompters.

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

#542

Post by djtango » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

poetaster wrote: post #535

djtango wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adja…

Thanks for sharing! We're blessed that such a hobby is lucrative enough to pay our bills. Not many hobbies are, and usually this leads to wage suppression as there's too much supply. My pet anecdata is how a violinist playing for the BBC Symphony Orchestra would earn roughly 30k despite being a top tier orchestral violinist.

Programmers are comparatively blessed that a relatively arcane and niche craft ended up creating trillions in value and the growth in demand for the skillset outpaced supply of the skillset. As such, it was possible to have your cake and eat it. But this was the exception not the rule. Tech has been glamorous for over a decade now: you have people from other industries moving over at all levels and armies of MBAs keen to rentseek internally and externally, and a fat pyramid of aspirational career coders coming up as graduates. And thus we see craft in software fading out.

You could argue that the same wage suppression does somewhat play out insofar as open source software is capable of producing far far more value than paid maintainers earn.

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

#543

Post by Whitespace » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 3:36 PM UTC

I have a large CNC router. I can throw a whole sheet of plywood on it and program it to cut it with a level of precision and repeatability that I am physically unable to do with my hands/eyes. In addition to the knowledge necessary to operate the machine, there's a lot of engineering knowledge necessary to design something to be manufactured by a CNC.

A lot of woodworkers scoff at the use of CNC routers; there's a lot that scoff at the use of any power tools at all!

I don't really understand though why folks have this *need* to assert that there is only One True Way to do something and to poo-poo on someone else's interests. It all seems like straw man arguments to me. Even the title of TFA BORN AGAINST, OR WHY HOBBY PROGRAMMING COMMUNITIES ARE AGGRESSIVELY AGAINST LLM USAGE seems like ragebait.

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

#544

Post by juleiie » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

jrapdx3 wrote: post #493

madmask wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I refuse to take government sanctioned chemicals to squash an individual into gdp maxxing mold.

My goal is my own chemical discovery. Mostly through natural plants and setting

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

#545

Post by thesz » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 6:38 PM UTC

yunwal wrote: post #539

thesz wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

  > I'm also not sure what the point of the keto story is.

If this drug does not work, there are plenty of others that are not fully 100% working. This was a mindset of a doctor. In case of baby with epilepsy it may cost her a life.

The situation was much like we have with LLMs. "It does not work" - "You are using an inferior thing, here are more advanced."

What is the cost of these not fully 100% working things?

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

#546

Post by frozenseven » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 7:47 PM UTC

_luci_ wrote: post #524

jujube3 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making your code open source was consenting to have people (and AIs) read it and learn from it. As an open source developer myself, I always understood that.

I consented to PEOPLE reading it. How could I have predicted that AI would take off so rapidly and get trained on my repos? How could I have predicted that AI would be trained on code without a license attached, or on code with strict licenses attached that do not allow for such use? A silly response if you ask me

The field of ML is probably older than your parents and IP law doesn't grant people immunity from it (or any other form of data analysis for that matter). If a person can read it, so can AI.

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

#547

Post by jujube3 » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

_luci_ wrote: post #524

jujube3 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making your code open source was consenting to have people (and AIs) read it and learn from it. As an open source developer myself, I always understood that.

I consented to PEOPLE reading it. How could I have predicted that AI would take off so rapidly and get trained on my repos? How could I have predicted that AI would be trained on code without a license attached, or on code with strict licenses attached that do not allow for such use? A silly response if you ask me

Saying that you can't copy something is different from saying that it is illegal to read it. For example, it is legal for me to read Ray Bradbury's book, "Fahrenheit 451" when I check it out from the library. It is not legal for me to copy the book. This is why it's called "copyright" and not "readright".

So then the question becomes what "copying" means. There is an extensive body of legal precedent on this matter, and it mostly all points to "transformative uses" being exempt from copyright. For example, if I count the number of words in Fahrenheit 451, that number is not copyrighted. If I reproduce just a sentence, or maybe even a paragraph, that also doesn't count. But at a certain threshold, once I've reproduced enough of the book verbatim, I have violated copyright. Training an LLM is also a transformative use which means that it is simply not covered by copyright.

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

#548

Post by yunwal » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 8:50 PM UTC

thesz wrote: post #545

yunwal wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> I'm also not sure what the point of the keto story is. If this drug does not work, there are plenty of others that are not fully 100% working. This was a mindset of a doctor. In case of baby with epilepsy it may cost her a life. The situation was much like we have with LLMs. "It does not work" - "You are using an inferior thing, here are more advanced." What is the cost of these not fully 100% working things?

ok i'm gonna be honest I still don't really understand what you're saying so I'm gonna bow out of this conversation

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

#549

Post by didibus » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 8:50 PM UTC

xboxnolifes wrote: post #260

didibus wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it gatekeeping in this case? Would they not allow beginners to join and learn? Are they not fully sharing the knowledge to anyone who's interested to learn it? To me, it amounts more to disapproving showing up to a handmade sweater community and showing off your machine made sweaters, or maybe a machine made sweater you added a handful of stitches too yourself. It's like not realizing that the community wasn't abo…

The term gatekeeping gets thrown around so much now that I feel like ive forgotten what it even means. What they are doing is having rules. All communities above a certain size need rules to maintain structure. Idk if that is or isnt gatekeeping, but it is definitely using rules to maintain their identity.

I can see that, but I don't see the negative connotation if it's meant as just saying there are norms, rules, slangs, etc. As long as those are not exclusionary of outsiders. The latter is how I always thought of gatekeeping, you put in place barriers to entry, so that newcomers have a hard time joining or getting involved, and it maintains your authority within the group or exclusive club.

Sometimes it can be murky, over enforcement of rules/norms can be off putting, and scare away newcomers. This is the common complaint on StackOverflow, you're putting yourself out there, asking a dumb question that makes you feel dumb already that you have to ask it, and you're immediately barraged and penalized that it is a duplicate, wasn't worded correctly, and so on, norms that you are new too. Makes you want to never ask a question again.

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

#550

Post by lowbloodsugar » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #231

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #169

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 read loads of books, but nothing you read in a book makes much sense until you do it yourself

Yeah, totally agree. Same is true for LLMs. These models have all the information. I use it like an interactive text book. If I just let it do the coding, I don’t learn. When I want to learn something, I type it in; I run cargo. I will ask the LLM “what the hell does that mean”, and then I’ll fix it. That’s not I how I produce code these days, but that’s how I learn. I dont ship code that I don’t understand, and if I don’t understand it, or I’m even suspicious, then I go on a learning binge.

How I used to learn was to wait for a sale on udemy and buy like the top 10 courses on whatever it was. One would be useful. Two might have useful sections. Seven would be garbage. I don’t need that now.