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Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

271–280 of 612 posts

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#271

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…

The first paragraph kind of reads like an inverse of Kant's criteria for a moral action: are you sure that there was no enjoyment, no pleasure was involved in this action or resulted from it? At the same time, it kind of establishes the ethics of self-entertainment, and by this, maybe, an imperative of joyless joy? It kind of echos 19th century 'accomplishment', a modest self-entertainment by the fruits of virtuos le…

PS: For the those seeking comfort in literature, we get some discussion on accomplishment in the work of Jane Austen, as in a worthy and virtuous entertainment for young gentlewomen, accomplishment for display, "true" accomplishment, as an ability to entertain oneself under conditions of intellectual austerity, means of intellectual independence, etc. Not to the least in "Pride and Prejudice", where accomplishment is discussed as a sibling and foil to Darcy's male conception of inner moral virtue, which, in fact, amounts to an socio-economic Regency scandal, as he entirely ignores his first-born duties in good-natured impulsiveness, bad decision making and short-sighted expenses, which an entire middle class depends on. (Is there a similar side to accomplishment?)

Notably, this was written at a similar time, when fortunes made from trade and a new kind of availability of manufactured goods was turning the (paper mache) table, in terms of what may be a good and fulfilled life and a worthwhile activity.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The LLM easily excels The agents are building all these small features, up to a full SaaS; and all the code is excellent? How much time do you spend in code review?

You're not paying attention. There is no agentic. You use the LLM the way your tax man uses a calculator. It's back and forth all the time. Ignore agentic stuff, that is marketing. Think about it anyway - why tf would it take all day, responses take seconds. There is no "leave it running" it's a fake concept

That's fine, but then the value of the tool evaporates. I agree you have to hold the LLM's hand so that it doesn't do crazy things, but that takes so much time that you don't actually save time over just writing it yourself. That is why I continue to maintain that LLMs are not a useful tool: either you completely give up on quality to get speed gains, or you maintain quality but get no speed gains.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#273
post #229
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying Assassin's Creed 87 or Far Cry 32 aren't cheap clones of its own previous incarnations? The gaming industry is, to a huge extent, just an optimisation problem for MBAs running the major publishers. Most gamers don't really value creativity, but easy rewards and familiar tropes in eternal regurgitation. AI is going to be able to pump out a never-ending stream to satisfy that market rather sooner than la…

> Are you saying Assassin's Creed 87 or Far Cry 32 aren't cheap clones of its own previous incarnations? If your goal was to prove that people don't care about how derivative games are, I think you picked some pretty bad examples, because Ubisoft is not in a good place right now. And I'd argue that the main reason behind it is precisely that lack of originality. Hell, even the biggest titans of the "release the same…

That "boredom" has raked in billions so far, and I don’t see that shifting in the market yet you describe to be honest.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#274

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…

You could do this before AI, though. Just download a big repo off github and build the binaries yourself. Or is that not enough obfuscation to convince yourself you made it?

Never would have.

I love the argument that “AI code doesn’t feel like mine :(“ but you’ll use some shit library from 12 years ago??

Are any of you actually developers? Ffs

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#275
post #184

I use LLMs at work. I'm expected to and paid to show up and do that, so I do it. But I refuse to leave understanding the codebase to machines. I did that the other day as an exception and fortunately my reviewer picked up on things which weren't exactly broken - just redundant and inelegant - e.g. two variables which easily could have been one, passed between several methods. We have an automatic reviewer as well and…

[dead]

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CNC machine will beat a whittler every time. If a craft is only about technical execution, AI is going to own it. The crafts that are safe are the ones that elicit/depend upon a complex human response that's not easily predictable from its parts.

Looks like teaching is about to become the "it" profession and might become insanely competitive.

This doesn’t really seem obvious to me at all. It seems to me that skills overall are being devalued, and so then will be teachers (even more than they already are). Why do you think this?

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#277
post #98

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…

Who needs a SaaS when you can just ask AI to write a private one just made for you?

This is exactly how it works. I said “AI make it rain” and now I run multiple international businesses.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#278
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…

You're projecting, and there are plenty of people in crafts who are using AI output as an input to their own works who are having a blast. AI images make amazing collages/photobash inputs, and AI music is useful to sample or use as inspiration for parts you're stuck on. These people just keep quiet about their use because of the witch hunts being persecuted by people who are afraid of change. AI use in creative field…

I go to a lot of craft fairs and I've been seeing people using AI to make their banners or book covers or detail designs on mugs and such. Here are people playing a "support local creators" line and they won't support their own local graphic designers.

There was one booth two shows ago that I particularly remember as it was selling "paintings" of pastoral scenes and wild life, "painted" on to log slices. This is a fairly common craft you might see at such events, but this particular booth was gluing an AI generated image printed on some kind of paper and then slapping it with a coat of texturing medium to give it a paint brush effect.

Disgusting. Selfish. Dishonest. Churlish. This is what craft is becoming. A pink sludge chicken mcnugget of cynical capitalist exploitation.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#279

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.

Dude, I think it's worse. Some carpenters still make a living creating high-end furniture, or straight-up art pieces. I can't quite imagine a future where a hand-crafted app will ever be a status-symbol. The people who love coding for code's sake are (economically) screwed.
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