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Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

331–340 of 612 posts

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#331
I think it's about how AI is being used across every field. For software developers, it helps you complete work at a pace that's much quicker. For artists, scientists and mathematicians it comes down to protecting the field from a set of collaborative agents who can possibly achieve anything.

What companies can do is restrict the usage to certain fields and keep the others immune. This should be universal so the competition exists where it should.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#332

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

A calculator does no design or review, so what exactly is the llm being used for, no metaphors or riddles please.

because to me this:

"Something simple like adding reactions, adding read receipts ... The LLM easily excels at the task and yet I didn’t have to do it."

Implies to me code gen.

That aside, are you a 'DidntUseIt' sockpuppet, given there are lots of green accounts responding on their behalf..

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just see it as tool. Used to be you had to calculate things by hand on paper. Then we got calculators, then spreadsheets. Complaining that by hand was better seems line nonsense. I'm old enough to have taken typing lessons in high school on typewriters with real ink and needed to use white-out to fix things and if there are too many mistakes having to start over from scratch. I don't want to go back. Construction w…

> LLMs to me are just another tool. They help me get what I wanted (an app, a game, a web site). I'm still directing. It's still my idea, with the features/look I want. My design choices still make the end project. > I really don't get the hate I hate that you are reducing my craft to just the end results and nothing else. No value in my expertise or knowledge, all of the hours slogging through blog posts, IT forums,…

> I hate that you are reducing my craft to just the end results and nothing else. No value in my expertise or knowledge, all of the hours slogging through blog posts, IT forums, stackoverflow and technical pdfs and you have reduced that to "well what can you build for me?"

Perhaps this comment spells the end of my account but I can’t not say this.

What you can create for your employer is and always was the ONLY reason they valued you. And why would you ever expect anything different? You are not hired for your suffering, your experience, the time you spent learning everything you know OTHER THAN insofar as it helps deliver your employer value.

By the way, I do not think your time has been wasted! Your knowledge and experience are extremely useful to avoid entire categories of problems that a naive LLM-only approach would produce in spades.

THAT, I believe, is what our craft truly is.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#334
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…

> their style is based on the mean

A base model that has only been pre-trained has output that is based on the mean, but most advances in capability the last three years have come from post-training. The influence of RL dominates every observable characteristic of coding agents today and steers the model towards strategies and practices that are objectively successful for the LLM.

I think the best code for an LLM is different than the best code for a human. Lots of redundancy, lots of unnecessary and overly defensive code is being reinforced by their training because it is successful there.

They still take it to far and do all kinds of stupid shit - if you look at the code you'll see it all the time but it actually doesn't cause many problems. Its much more important to focus steering effort on feature scope and architecture. I still ask it to refactor code from time to time and its pretty good at doing that.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#335
post #72

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…

This is eery to read, as I've been thinking something very similar recently whilst discussing gen AI with a close friend who works in tech but isn't a developer, who now uses AI to build everything he wished he could. Meanwhile I've seen other people, colleagues, friends, who are programmers get incredibly frustrated about AI and it's almost entirely that it lets non-developers make things. The feeling I get is that…

I wish I gave a shit about producing value for a company.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just see it as tool. Used to be you had to calculate things by hand on paper. Then we got calculators, then spreadsheets. Complaining that by hand was better seems line nonsense. I'm old enough to have taken typing lessons in high school on typewriters with real ink and needed to use white-out to fix things and if there are too many mistakes having to start over from scratch. I don't want to go back. Construction w…

I'm with you. I've done some pretty special things over the years I was employed, none of which had any input from LLMs. Now I'm retired and I have a tool at my fingertips that I can instruct, manage, and (sometimes eventually) get what I want. It's not massively dissimilar to managing a group of engineers... The inspiration, the ideas, the workflow, the vision, the end product - all mine. The grunt work that takes a…

Filling your retirement with all those rainbows and unicorns nobody but you care is fine, but what do those who are not retired yet do?

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#337
> AI art is shit, kind of by definition anti-art, embarrassing to look at and cringe-inducing to be associated with

It is one thing to have compassion for artists as their livelihoods become threatened, but this sort of rhetoric makes me think the writer is too blinded by their emotions to have an accurate opinion of the current state of image gen. Much of what can be produced by eg. the openai's image 2.5 model is more-or-less indistinguishable from a person's work.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#338
Don't conflate your self-worth with your ability to produce in the economy, or your test score, or which college you went to, or how good of a programmer you are. It's such a tragedy that we are so obsessed with achievement and competence.

Why should I be measured by how well I do things. In fact do we think human value can be measured at all?

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Vice City was released nearly 25 years ago! Also it's a game, so it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison. If you count the unique 'features' (or systems) of Vice City, you might find it's a comparable count to the number of features of a medium-sized mobile app.

I feel you need to clarify which mobile apps are "medium-sized" for you, because if we just interpret this comment literally it's just laughable.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#340
post #72

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…

This is eery to read, as I've been thinking something very similar recently whilst discussing gen AI with a close friend who works in tech but isn't a developer, who now uses AI to build everything he wished he could. Meanwhile I've seen other people, colleagues, friends, who are programmers get incredibly frustrated about AI and it's almost entirely that it lets non-developers make things. The feeling I get is that…

I agree that the employee's purpose is to bring value. The question is, now that AI can generate code that's good enough to get by, is there enough value that a software developer brings to justify their continued employment. IMO, the answer for most software developers is no¹, even the ones eagerly embracing AI, so the smugness of AI adopters is likely unwarranted.

The notion that more work will spring into being to justify their continued employment is wishful thinking, particularly if AI keeps improving as fast as its promoters claim. Supporting themselves by creating their own new software businesses is also wishful thinking.

¹ Probably including me.

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