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Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

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Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#211

Post by beej71 »

wanderlust123 wrote: post #185
embedding-shape wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so without LLMs you’re now doing only beginner stuff. You won’t seem like a real dev anymore. I think it's the opposite. When I'm on the edges of Real Difficult Stuff (TM), then LLMs are less of help compared to when I just need basic web applications or similar "beginner stuff". If what you're working on doesn't exists in the training data at all, the LLMs can sometimes be more in the way than helpful, as they don…

What is this real difficult stuff you speak of that only you can do and LLMs can not?

I don't have a concrete example, but it's probably the stuff that starts taking longer to describe in English than to code.

"Make me this thing there are a million examples of" vs. "make me this unique thing in this exact, particular way".

I don't think there's anything an LLM can't write given enough direction. (It's a one-sentence fuck-it one-off on one end of the spectrum, and it degenerately ends with you giving it exact code and prompting it to echo it back to you on the other.)

But the jobs of making basic apps and web pages are the new WordPress jobs in terms of pay, I'd agree.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#213

Post by globular-toast »

I've noticed that delivery drivers are always racing around like their lives depend on it? Why do they do that? Because they are given workloads that are impossible to complete without racing. But what if it just didn't race? Their employers would be forced to hire more drivers, or increase the cost of delivery. By racing they are just building a rod for their own backs.

I feel like it's the same with programming now. So you built something in a week that used to take two. Ok, that's expected now. Expectations are raised before you can even blink, but it's very difficult to lower them. So that's it. We've built the rod for our backs and now must shit out code quicker than we can think.

I'm sad I won't get to take pride in anything I program any more. But oh well. There are other things in life that are more important. I expect I'll become more of a plumber just joining together slop to make things happen.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#214

Post by mabini »

coldtea wrote: post #121
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…

[flagged]

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Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#215

Post by Kuyawa »

"I am making shoes with a hammer and some leather but this Nike shop just opened next to me and got me nervous, let's see what the future holds for me, I'll keep hammering nails to this sole as pure artisans do..."

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#216

Post by timcobb »

01100011 wrote: post #161
timcobb wrote: post #91

My first thought after reading this was, good for this person to have only been broken, or nearly broken, I guess, by society finally now. I was broken long before AI. I learned that no one was interested in my doodads even before generative AI. People were interested in all this other stuff, like ROI, how much money things make, how practical something is, etc. "No one cares about the code" was beat into me 10-20 ye…

Hah, I think I agree with this, but from a cynical, dark perspective. I'm an old systems programmer (embedded, c/c++, linux, etc) with an EE background (but not one of them if you know what I mean. I enjoyed software and appreciate the art). But early on I came to believe software engineering at a workplace is not your personal art project. If you want that, great, go write code on your own time(as many of us do!). B…

Yeah I agree but I think the question these days isn't about the workplace anymore, it's about the meaning and value of human endeavor.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#217

Post by beej71 »

hgoel wrote: post #209
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…

I don't get it, you guys speak as if you have infinite time and no goals besides just the act of writing code, with no consideration about what the code you're writing is supposed to do. As if you'd be happy to just write anything as long as you were allowed to manually type everything out. On top of that there's the "did you enjoy the craft or did you enjoy the compliments" framing. Are people who use pre-existing l…

> you guys speak as if you have infinite time and no goals besides just the act of writing code, with no consideration about what the code you're writing is supposed to do

Can't speak for the OP but I definite care what my code is supposed to do. :) The last little program I wrote was a 40-line thing to compute my estimated quarterly taxes so I wouldn't have to launch a spreadsheet. It had better work right!

I could have used an LLM to write it, but that would have been boring as hell.

Got no compliments for it. No one has even seen it. I don't care; it was just relaxing and fun to code.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#218

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

sampullman wrote: post #191
wanderlust123 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this real difficult stuff you speak of that only you can do and LLMs can not?

Write a decent comment, for one. It struggles with some of the firmware stuff I do, though that's more due to a lack of a proper automated feedback loop.

Yeah, it's generally the harness around the model that makes it useful.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#220

Post by jodrellblank »

srdjanr wrote: post #113
aniviacat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that fully captures the situation. My mother plants tomatoes in her garden. She invests a lot of work into them, only to get a few tomatoes a year. Clearly it is not an economic effort; clearly she is doing it out of passion, not for the actual value of the tomatoes. However, imagine the plants stopped yielding tomatoes, and would never do so again. Would my mother continue working on her tomatoes? I do…

I think it captures it perfectly, and the question is what are tomatoes here. Is it being challenged intellectually and proud of solving a puzzle, or is it getting praised, valued or paid? People didn't stop solving sudokus when sudoku solvers appeared.

Although Peter Norvig thought they should https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096922
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