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Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

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Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#611

Post by whatevaa »

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…

No, I'm annoyed that they submit their sloppy code to me as some value and then I have to deal with it. Happened in our org.

You are a programmer yourself, that is different. You can review AI output, understand and explain it. I won't get a response from you "I don't know, AI said so".

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#612

Post by DaSHacka »

acedTrex wrote: post #556
someguynamedq wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you're just drawing a new arbitrary distinction

In no way shape or form is the distinction between LLMs and Humans arbitrary in any sense. They are two different things, LLMs are not humans.

So the one orchestrating them would have an even stronger claim to having 'created' something, given its simply a tool?

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#613

Post by sph »

9dev wrote: post #273
bakugo wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There is more to creative arts than raking in billions.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#614

Post by capr »

sigseg1v wrote: post #506
acedTrex wrote: post #369

Earlier 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…

> Should I imagine that all architects have done nothing their entire life?

Well this is awkard...

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#615

Post by whstl »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #581
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…

Let's plug AI into the parent's post and see where that takes us. > " Used to be you had to reason things out using your brain. Then we got LLMs, then AI. Complaining that using your own brain was better seems like nonsense. I'm old enough to have had to use my intelligence and my education to figure out solutions and if the engineering challenge was too hard, I had to really work at it. I don't want to go back. " Th…

I've seen a few people already descending into pure AI madness, not able (wanting?) to do their work anymore, and just repeating everything the AI says, going to it for every single decision on the job.

A few of those were fired. Another two are just producing slop and are being kept because nobody cared about their work in the first place.

It's not just generating text, but using the agent to make every single decision.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#616

Post by 0x69420 »

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…

not that it was necessarily the intent, but you laid on the "PS: you have intrinsic value" with the exact same tone and cadence as someone trying to work in a "you are loved/valued" while trying to talk someone off the tenth-floor railing. jesus, it's really bleak out there, huh.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#617

Post by whstl »

tpmoney wrote: post #577
sashank_1509 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a terrible example. Cars qualitatively opened up something that humans could never do before. Same with the computer. What about LLMs? LLMs just replace what you were already doing, but don’t qualitatively open up all that much in the frontier. A million lines of LLM slop? Arguably LLMs close the frontier, rely too much on it and your ability to think hard and long ends up getting crushed.

> LLMs just replace what you were already doing IF you were already doing it. But LLMs also allow people who never were doing something to now do that thing as well. In the same way Excel macros enabled some people to run whole businesses on a spreadsheet without hiring a "real" programmer, LLMs will enable some people to run a whole business on "real" applications without hiring a "real" programmer. And yeah, some o…

> LLMs will enable some people to run a whole business on "real" applications without hiring a "real" programmer

SaaS, and before that a lot of shrink wrap software, has been allowing this for several decades now.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#618

Post by properbrew »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #582
properbrew wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see the analogy, but fundementally that human liked caring for animals, they didn't like transporting the goods as effectively as possible, if they did then sitting in a box optimising delivery time would make them feel useful and respected. The human in your analogy would be better off working with animals on a farm, or vet practice, where the technological advances that deliver better care to animals would ma…

>The human in your analogy would be better off working with animals on a farm, or vet practice, where the technological advances that deliver better care to animals would make them feel even more fulfilled. Yes. And instead they are stuck in the role of slop doula, unable to afford the luxury of being able to perform a furfilling role in society.

But what if they no longer have to "tolerate mucking out the stables" and can instead focus on riding.

We could go back and forth on the analogy but I think it comes down to one of two things:

1. You enjoy writing code to fix a problem

2. You enjoy fixing problems and solve that by writing code

If you're in camp 1 then AI feels extremely unfulfilling and understandably so, for camp 2 it's a whole new world.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#619

Post by jodrellblank »

properbrew wrote: post #563
jodrellblank wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can see the analogy, but fundementally that human liked caring for animals, they didn't like transporting the goods as effectively as possible, if they did then sitting in a box optimising delivery time would make them feel useful and respected. The human in your analogy would be better off working with animals on a farm, or vet practice, where the technological advances that deliver better care to animals would ma…

And if they liked optimizing transport, but now the box is self-driving and the logistics are planned by machine? The farm is automated and humans get in the way. The vet is a robot. Also any other suggestion you have is automated - AI is now better at everything. Nobody needs or wants anything the human can do. AI is a more fun friend, a better singer, a more engaging teacher or entertainer, a better movie creator, a better cook, etc. All that's left is Postel's "Amusing Ourselves to Death", from cradle to grave nothing the human does matters or can matter. Then what?

Perfomatively going through the hollowed-out motions of human life like a toddler playing with a plastic kitchen, wishing the ghosts of meaning and fulfillment would come back into them? Enjoy!

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#620

Post by Chris2048 »

eszed wrote: post #258
card_zero wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wanted to say that too. You can't (always) separate enjoying the craft from enjoying the praise. People too often talk about the value of an art object divorced from its provenance, as if you could measure its goodness with a meter, instead of the value of the audience relating to the personality expressed in it, which means it's a communication, and the communication isn't all one-way. When you're crafting s…

I agree with all of that, but I think there's a bit of "ball-hiding" going on in most of these conversations. It isn't only that programmers crave(d) praise or social recognition (though maybe that's it for some), but they're also having to come to terms with the fact that their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value. They were able, for a long time, to (and I say this absolutely non-pejoratively - in…

> their "art-form" suddenly has much, much less economic value

Can you define art/artist? If software is art, then what profession isn't?

Software still has value, specifically utility, it's just cheaper to produce, its market value is lower.

How is that comparable to the arts?

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