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Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

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Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#101

Post by LogicFailsMe »

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…

One thing to note is that as soon as Suno figured out hiphop artists were making $150,000 a year spewing AI songs onto Spotify, they imposed a 60 song per month download limit to stop that.

It won't, they'll just do analog recordings and remaster them with Codex, but it's pretty clear that anyone who finds a market inefficiency here will find that inefficiency addressed forthwith to keep the casino rigged in favor of the owners.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#102

Post by saejox »

Art for art's sake, did not work for me.

I was planning to earn some money from my second Steam game. Than AI happened.

I did not gave up on because competition is now higher. I gave up because programming was fun for me, been at for 20 years. But right i always know in part of my brain 'this 1000 lines of code could have been just a prompt'.

Joy is not there for me anymore. I hope to get it back someday.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#104

Post by dofm »

ideashower wrote: post #89
dofm wrote: post #70

This. This is more or less precisely how I feel. Other creative fields have already begun to get a handle on how AI is a soul-deadening thief of joy in their fields. I have hope for illustrators and painters and photographers and musicians and makers. With those friends and in those communities I see people who have already done the thinking, can already express their feelings, and are already making commitments to d…

I don't know. Maybe it's the people doing software dev that are yet to reckon with it to a degree -- or have found themselves on opposite sides of denial. I think industry is quite clear that AI is helpful to their bottom line. At the end, that's all that matters to them. That SWEs cannot, say, unionize to prevent this shift in labor-elimination or articulate any other coherent way of countering the industry's desire…

> I think industry is quite clear that AI is helpful to their bottom line.

No, I think the industry is hopeful that AI is helpful to their bottom line.

I don't really think there is very strong evidence that the ROI is good.

The problem is that the industry is riddled with FOMO and FUD: everyone thinks everyone else is using it so they must. And this FUD and FOMO is being imposed upon them from above: there is a mandate to be afraid and fearful you're not using AI enough.

Even I, a burned out freelancer who once used to be happiest writing code, have to accept that if I return to my career, I must develop ways to use AI to keep up with people who are clearly already using it indiscriminately (or at best over-optimistically). And I must develop ways to talk to potential clients about the aspects of indiscriminate AI use that they should care about, and about the value of stepping back from one-shotted ideas.

I am trying to operate without FOMO and to see past FUD, but I accept I am compelled to do that or quit.

I think SWEs can't unionize for very different reasons, and that if you hang out on HN long enough you will develop a deeper understanding about why. But I am not restarting that discussion beyond saying this, because it always makes my head hurt!

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#106

Post by cmiles74 »

DidntUseIt wrote: post #92

Problem is without LLMs I’m making a contact lead form with some basic stuff and calling it good. With them, I’m making the whole SaaS. I just made the best DM experience last night. I never would have before. Feels and looks just like iMessage, because the users are coming from that, and it’s just for a small biz. It’s been planned for a while because the messages involve so much file sharing, it was time to build a…

I’m not sure how this is responding to the post… I think the author is going for something different, and that it’s not necessarily about getting things done quickly or implementing every feature on their list. More about the journey and learning along the way, feeling ownership of their project, etc.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#107

Post by layer8 »

jaynetics wrote: post #93
layer8 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think your argument has two facettes: 1. It is great to see an effect of your thoughts, like something happening in the real world. 2. Coding offers a feeling of perfect control due to the deterministic nature of code. I would argue that 1 is still the case with LLMs, and 2 was always just 95% true, never 100%, because of oversights, bugs in libraries, and what have you. So what actually decays is maybe not so much…

1 combines with 2 because you can think about what changes to make to your code, and then that changed version runs. This is different from instructing an LLM to change something for you, where you have no insight in the underlying artifact being changed, or can’t predict what and how exactly the LLM will change it.

1 isn’t only about seeing the effects of your thoughts, it’s at least as much about transforming your thoughts into a more suitable, discrete and exact representation, whose effects you will in turn see. Having code as the intermediate representation that you work on, and that you work in terms of, is essential to both 1 and 2. Similar to how for a physicist, writing down formulas and working with them, transforming them, is essential.

The code is the language of thought, the model of thought, of what then gets reified as behavior at runtime.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#108

Post by doginasuit »

Coding has always felt a little like sorcery to me, with a lot of learning and experience you can channel data flowing through silicon and networks into something beautiful and useful. It still feels like that, but now you don't need someone like me.

The tradeoff is that it is now easier to do more complex sorcery, even as someone who is writing the code. My motivation has always been the sheer joy of solving each puzzle and moving on to the next. That joy is no less real in the world of LLMs, and having one in the backseat to check my code and answer questions has genuinely expanded the horizon.

I still have my own "fuck it, make it anyway" moments as the premium on my skill disintegrates. I don't think we want a world where humans are no longer involved in controlling that power, and the puzzles are still fun.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#109

Post by SecretDreams »

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…

Fack, hopefully it's better than Ikea vs carpenter or most people will need new jobs because most "customers" are just buying Ikea all day.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#110

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

DidntUseIt wrote: post #92

Problem is without LLMs I’m making a contact lead form with some basic stuff and calling it good. With them, I’m making the whole SaaS. I just made the best DM experience last night. I never would have before. Feels and looks just like iMessage, because the users are coming from that, and it’s just for a small biz. It’s been planned for a while because the messages involve so much file sharing, it was time to build a…

I don't know where all of your shoulds are coming from. I too am having a lot of fun building with AI, but I can see how it might not appeal to everyone.

And I think the people it doesn't appeal to, I think we need perspectives like theirs.

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