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Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

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Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#51

Post by lacedeconstruct »

user43928 wrote: post #4

I liked building apps and helpful tools before AI came around. I've been doing so for 15 years, 10 of them professionally. Today, I like it even better. It's never been so fun. What would have taken days of work, if it was feasible at all, I can have implemented in half an hour now and iterate on the result to make it work the way I want. I stopped reviewing the code at all. People on here are often saying how that's…

>My app has 200k LOC + 100k in tests, and there is no sign of the AI slowing down or being unable to maintain it.

May I ask what does this app do ? 200k is like GTA vice city level, is like sqlite level, If its a financial tracker or a to-do list or an agent coordinator I am going to kill myself

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#53

Post by goonersallofyou »

> the output doesn’t feel like mine, and I take no pride in what it produces.

So much this.

I don't understand how some people seem to have no self awareness or shame in saying "I build X" where "X" was entirely prompted by an LLM.

It's like ordering a meal from door dash and calling yourself a chef.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#54

Post by grvdrm »

user43928 wrote: post #18
yoz-y wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too I use my apps every day. But the main thing coming out of this is that they are tailored to me. Turning hobbies into hustles is one of the worse things that happened in the post social media days.

I think selling software that solves your own problems is great and beats trying to develop for customers you do not understand.

Completely agree. You tell the best story for your product doing it that way.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#55

Post by layer8 »

molteanu wrote: post #24

I've only found one answer to the "creative work" struggle now, after code writing as an art seems to have died. Start to write. Or continue to write. Or consider writing as the place to explore and develop your ideas. They're just words. There is even more freedom there to create. Not restricted by a compiler. Not restricted by the shape of the final product. Words can be written anywhere. Sometimes on a paper, even…

What people like about code is that you can run it and then it does exactly the things you wrote! And there is a precise, predictable relationship between the code and what it does, which you can fully understand and reason about!

Neither natural-language-writing nor LLM-prompting does give you that.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#56

Post by _factor »

bbor wrote: post #46
MachineMan wrote: post #10

In general creators must do some honest introspection. Did you enjoy the crafts, or did you enjoy the compliments? Did you enjoy the difficult puzzles or the identity derived from a career that gives you the reputation and perceived value of someone who can do a thing most people can’t? Did you enjoy the code itself or the accomplishment of seeing your ideas brought to life? Who remains when the thing you do no longe…

Did you enjoy the crafts, or did you enjoy the compliments? I'm sorry... I'm trying to be respectful, but I find this comment highly combative and disrespectful beneath a professional veneer. Implying that the opposition --people who also use deep neural networks to make games instead of just using the huge set of tools that no one human could ever understand in full but aren't usually called "AI" anymore-- is lackin…

Did you read the article?

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#58

Post by user43928 »

mohamedkoubaa wrote: post #29
user43928 wrote: post #4

I liked building apps and helpful tools before AI came around. I've been doing so for 15 years, 10 of them professionally. Today, I like it even better. It's never been so fun. What would have taken days of work, if it was feasible at all, I can have implemented in half an hour now and iterate on the result to make it work the way I want. I stopped reviewing the code at all. People on here are often saying how that's…

>there is no sign of the AI slowing down or being unable to maintain it This means you designed the system well and made sure the agent implemented it correctly. Even at Big Company the big shot architects don't review every line of code, and nobody seemed to mind that

I'd like to think it comes down to my expertise, but I don't believe I did a lot of designing.

Sure, I've given a lot of inputs over the time, probably I've steered it to solutions that work.

Maybe it was also helpful that I set up a skill to use a different model to review the code for correctness, technical debt, and whether the location where the code is added is appropriate or warrants a new file or abstraction. I set this up long before subagents were widely used.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#60

Post by bbor »

_factor wrote: post #56
bbor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you enjoy the crafts, or did you enjoy the compliments? I'm sorry... I'm trying to be respectful, but I find this comment highly combative and disrespectful beneath a professional veneer. Implying that the opposition --people who also use deep neural networks to make games instead of just using the huge set of tools that no one human could ever understand in full but aren't usually called "AI" anymore-- is lackin…

Did you read the article?

Yes, I read the 5-7 paragraph article :). I'm not sure what part of it you could possibly consider a rebuttal...? It's just talking about one devs decision to keep working on their purist software despite their anxiety; basically no broader points are made at all, and certainly none are made with any sort of rigor. It didn't seem like that was his goal.
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