Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called metaphor. Please reserve your erm akshully's for someone else.
It's actually a valid extension of your metaphor that introduces nuance that substantially weakens your point
yawn
Fuck it, make it anyway
601–610 of 613 posts
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
> PS: You have intrinsic value, and your skills will also remain valuable, if even for how it teaches you to approach complex problems and think deeply. I appreciated this, but I feel the crux of the issue is this is only true with painful caveats. If you're a "computer carpenter" (massive nerd), that massive nerdiness was almost like a scarce asset in the professional world that appeared only after a life involving…
The idea has been to get the nerds out of computing since 1971. Milt Bryce and his son Tim were pretty much the inventors of modern information-systems management[0]. And they were open in their hatred of and contempt for programmers and how they worked. Their methodology, PRIDE, was centered around giving the programmers as little to do and as little autonomy and leverage over the organization as possible, because i…
Yet as a programmer myself, I've been in situations where I'm artificially separated from the customer against my will.
I want to build something useful for them but if they let me be too close to the customer, I'll be making important decisions that are supposed to be someone else's job.
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider that maybe AI should mean AGI. That was what its original meaning was supposed to be, and calling generative models AI is watering down the original term and accepting the frame of the LLM makers. What's really disappointing about current LLM models isn't that they aren't useful, but that they really tell us much about intelligence at all. The techniques used to make LLMs aren't generalizable at all, and I c…
AI has included everything from neural nets to video game NPCs for as long as I'm aware of. What else is the broad umbrella term? We have to have one. And for anything else, you need to be specific about its properties anyway. In particular, usage of "real AI" is nonsense without a more precise definition.
It isn't nonsense. If AI was such a broad umbrella term, why would companies be tripping over themselves to use it? If it meant video game NPC level of intelligence, nobody would be in a hurry to adopt it. It's very clear that when Nvidia or OpenAI use the term AI, they really want you to think these LLMs are actual human level intelligence. That is why they are doing it.
When I use nonsense like "real AI" I think you very well know what I mean, and don't find it in any way confusing or ambiguous.
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#604I 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'm also having the time of my life building products I want to exist. It's like suddenly having the budget to hire a small team and materialize ideas that before would have required many months or years of your time (or taking investment).
And yet, I'd be lying if I said I don't miss the flow.
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a bad analogy, because unless you're cooking a recipe, cooking is about all the small decisions you're making during the process which could apply both to coding or the design aspect of building software with an LLM.
Except most vibe coders proudly admit that they don't even look at the code anymore. Can you really make those small decisions during the cooking process if you're not touching or even looking at the food at any point?
Th distinction that can be drawn is between the code, and the user experience of the software. You may argue that the two are inextricably linked, but I don’t think that can be treated as an absolute principle.
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. If grandma grows her own tomatoes she can only try four tomato-related recipes. If she goes to the grocery store she can try thirty. The AI is enabling a lot more experimentation with software. The AI supplies the tomatoes (infrastructure / grunt work), grandma tries her recipes (the software / business idea).
26 extra recipes are irrelevant if the person finds far more joy in the process of growing the tomatoes than in what they cook with them.
Then do that? At the very least, the presence of more code(/recipes) does not hinder an individual trying to do it themselves.
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t see the analogy? AI is not preventing the craftsman programmer from coding. Your compiler hasn’t stopped “yielding fruit”, so to speak. The correct analogy would be, your mom can also just go to the supermarket and get much cheaper mass-produced tomatoes; which is… exactly the current situation?
Modify the analogy: nobody cares about the mother’s tomatoes and everyone around her says they’re indistinguishable from the cheap supermarket variety. Even if it’s not true
I haven't seen people say it's indistinguishable quality, but that it doesn't matter. Quite similar to mass-produced foods in the supermarket, actually. We all know they're not as good as a small batch made by hand by someone, but they still get the job done.
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
That take is pretty disingenuous and it makes it hard to take an argument seriously. Who are you to say they did nothing? If someone uses an AI agent to distribute tasks to it like a tech architect does to a team of developers by teaching what to do, and assigning to whom should do it, with examples and instructions, and then reviews the output, offers feedback, and iterates for a few weeks until something is complet…
At which point does this argument stop being valid? Is the project manager the one that created the product? Is it the CEO that is paying the people to? Is it the bank that has granted the loan to build the company?
In my view, the one that "creates" is the one that puts in the majority of the effort. Under this definition, the average vibe coder isn't creating anything.
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
> PS: You have intrinsic value, and your skills will also remain valuable, if even for how it teaches you to approach complex problems and think deeply. I appreciated this, but I feel the crux of the issue is this is only true with painful caveats. If you're a "computer carpenter" (massive nerd), that massive nerdiness was almost like a scarce asset in the professional world that appeared only after a life involving…
The idea has been to get the nerds out of computing since 1971. Milt Bryce and his son Tim were pretty much the inventors of modern information-systems management[0]. And they were open in their hatred of and contempt for programmers and how they worked. Their methodology, PRIDE, was centered around giving the programmers as little to do and as little autonomy and leverage over the organization as possible, because i…
> You may bristle and think the above is not true...
Hehe, my undergrad was comp sci, I turned down an Oxbridge postgraduate in Advanced Computing Science to do an interdisiplinary PhD, technically in the social sciences department, because I genuinely do understand and agree with you on a few levels. At the end of the day, people are the ones who need to be kept happy. The flip side of 1000's of isolated hours of screentime is a lack of practice at making people feel comfortable in real life. But, the same is true for basically any craftsman of any craft, just swap screen with lathe or instrument or other tool of choice.
I think there's a biological element to being a nerd, so "Have you tried not being a nerd?" is like asking someone with ginger hair "have you tried not being ginger?" Sure, they can try/dye, but the roots will keep growing through, fighting against something that's a massive asset in the right environment.
Regarding PRIDE, it sounds like that came from a time where people were genuinely scared/amazed/confused by computers. When you consider that, minimising the role of people who are going to make it all about tech and computers makes sense. Maybe the tide is changing over the past 2 - 5 years against tech, but the entire 2000s up until recently were defined IMO by the pervasiveness and excitement and accessibility of tech by literally everyone on the planet. In that world, where customers pay good money for magic tech they don't understand, a company of nerds brings safety and reassurance (and high salaries and decision impact for said nerds).
I worry nerds and the products of nerds at the top like Zuckerberg, Altman and Musk are causing the public attitude to shift back to what they were like pre-2000s, where tech is dangerous and powerful and scary and normal humans need to be kept away from it, and advocates of tech should be viewed sceptically.
> Nerds were seen as a necessary liability to automating a business's information systems; now, they are no longer necessary.
This is essentially my central point/worry. I hope there's more nuance to it though, mainly because 1 younger relative in particular is in his early teens, and he's clearly a naive/friendly/enthusiastic/hyper-fixating/lots of nerdy screentime type. Until a few years ago, I assumed he'd have the life a lot of us have had. Now though, I wonder what life will be afforded to nerdy, weird people born into a world where they're seen as significantly less necessary.
Re: Fuck it, make it anyway
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
"But I don’t think you do love it. I think you love being praised for being smart. The pats on the head. That’s the most likely explanation for why your motivation for coding by hand has disappeared." I think you (and almost everyone in this thread) are missing an important point here: even without relying on external input on our work, we feel less proud of the work we produce by hand when we know we could have prom…
Then why wouldn't you build it with AI?
Why wouldn't a Formula 1 driver enjoy self-driving race cars?