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Fuck it, make it anyway

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Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#391

Post by weakfish »

jodrellblank wrote: post #262
socalgal2 wrote: post #128

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…

If we strip away all the layers of onion, we are not left with a Platonic ideal onion, we're left with nothing. Removing every chore, task, craft, friction from life does not leave an ideal perfect life, it leaves nothing. Some people are feeling closer to that nothing than others. A human who liked caring for horses, feeding them, brushing them, comforting them during thunderstorms, blanketing them in cold weather,…

I love this articulation.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#392

Post by GMoromisato »

Think of the classic Venn diagram, the intersection of:

1. Things I enjoy doing.

2. Things I am good at doing.

3. Things people value me doing.

The problem with AI is that it potentially changes all three of those bubbles. 1. Sure, AI is powerful, but maybe I don't enjoy coding that way. 2. I'm really good at C++, but I'm not very good at prompting (at least no better than anyone else). 3. No one hires me anymore because AI can do my job cheaper.

The world isn't going to change back, so our task is to figure out the new intersection. This is always hard work, and I have no easy answers.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#393

Post by parineum »

alkz wrote: post #386

I for one always found coding tedious and repetitive in general, it is fun at the beginning when you manage to validate an idea or produce an MVP, but then the chores begin and I have never enjoyed those. So in my view LLMs empower creativity by letting me focus on the stuff that's more interesting

I largely agree with you and, at this moment, LLMs still have shortcomings that allow me to get into the weeds and solve some tricky problems now and then.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#394

Post by someguynamedq »

imdsm wrote: post #72
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…

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…

Why do so many people miss that it lets software engineers build more bigger better things? It's not just people who think the job is to create value. It's anyone who cares more about creation itself than the process of the creation

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#395

Post by 59percentmore »

acedTrex wrote: post #369
59percentmore wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Expression isn't about seeking recognition, in the sense of clout or popularity, it's simply a matter of " I want other people to be able to see what I see. " If I compare what I'm able to produce by hand, and what I'm able to get the computer to spit out, it's pretty clear to me which is closest to what's in my head. So why do I have to be ashamed of that?

> And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Because they did not do anything? Theres nothing to celebrate, no skill to honor, no sweat and tears to salute. It just exists

>Theres nothing to celebrate, no skill to honor, no sweat and tears to salute.

I don't care about any of that. I just want people to be able to see what's in my mind's eye at the highest fidelity possible.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#396

Post by someguynamedq »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #368
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…

I find that it falls apart after the first 1000 or so lines.

Then you're really really bad at using it. At the very least it is functional with minimal effort on codebases with 10s of thounsand

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#397

Post by hirvi74 »

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…

Regarding programming, I would say my answer would be yes to all of your questions. I think all of those feelings and pleasures can exist simultaneously.

Though, I believe you are touching on a point that is common in Buddhism. Attachment leads to suffering. Many of us, myself included, are attached to the identity of being a programmer. I would by lying if I said I did not have bittersweet feelings about the future. But I try to always remind myself about the impermanence of everything in the universe. Even if LLMs never existed, there would be a day when I write my final line of code. The day may come sooner than I once imagined, but it was always destined.

I think it is important to be mindful of the present as well. I can still program currently. I was programming minutes before righting this comment. Thus, it is imperative that I spend some time relishing in the fact that I still am healthy and capable enough to program. I have not been replaced yet. I still feel an abundance of gratitude and satisfaction.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#398

Post by glouwbug »

Generative AI reverts to the mean: Prose will be over explanatory and miss subtly that human expression normally hits. Same for software: LLMs have a natural tendency to modularize and sprout. You'll find yourself knee deep in enterprise fizz buzz hell [1]. If you're fine with a product that regresses to the mean, great, but what I find that isn't discussed here on hackernews is reason for being. By choosing to create you choose to exist. An LLM may very well be capable of generating _the mean_ of what you're trying to express, but without you consuming it, rewriting it, and ultimately learning it, your team and you are robbed of the ability to communicate and reason about a piece of crucial machinery.

So yes, fuck it, make it anyway, so that you can continue to exist and provide the communicative, engineering, and reasoning value that others still need from you.

[1] https://wiki.c2.com/?RavioliCode

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#399

Post by cmiles74 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #221
cmiles74 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure there is some of that, people looking back at years of learning a skill, maybe even turning it into a productive career, and being upset that anyone can pay for an LLM tool and get output they believe is comparable. In my opinion, that’s not the whole thing and the article and the parent post touch on this. The part about the process of struggling to get your mind to understand new ideas and new ways of doin…

Everyone addresses this differently, but for me, I always grated at people whose knowledge of esoteric patterns and language features was their whole identity. It feels to me like suffering through programming built that knowledge, and so that knowledge was an indicator of taste and experience and persistence, but then it became cosplayed as people sought the knowledge itself in "patterns", or "features" rather than…

For sure, there have always been obnoxious people trying to gatekeep who they feel met their arbitrary bar of "good developer" with trivia or a command of arcane details. It makes the work harder and it discourages talented people who are new to the field, like junior devs.

Maybe LLM tooling can help people demystify some of that. I think that would be a good thing.

In my experience, LLM tools are not infallible and I've seen them introduce changes in one place that causes defects in two or three other places. They write code that I find difficult to read and that can make diagnosing these bugs harder than it needs to be. People have brought me code that LLM tools have written because they are surprised that it doesn't work and are wondering if somehow they, the human, just doesn't understand something.

Maybe this is just another bump and these tools will continue to improve. Until these things aren't a problem. As it stands today, I think there's still a place for a people in commercial software development.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#400

Post by [deleted] »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #242
socalgal2 wrote: post #128

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,…

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