Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 646 posts

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#621

Post by jodrellblank »

properbrew wrote: post #618
johnnyanmac wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Now take away the chore of 'focusing on riding'. Genetically or chemically calm the horse so it does not get flustered or moody. Metabolically tweak the horse so it does not get tired or thirsty. Robotically till and smooth the ground so there is nothing to trip over. Notify everyone in the vicinity where the horse is going, so there are no obstacles to avoid. When you can't crash or fall off if you try, when it doesn't matter if you're focusing or not. Maybe dynamically adjust that so you know the AI overlord is pampering you to keep the difficulty 'just right' and this is not a real challenge it's elaborate wireheading.

Your point 2 is where my onion metaphor comes in. When you fix a problem you improve a thing. When you fix all the problems you have taken all the life away from living. Maybe that works for what to do today - Ostrich head in the sand and solve problems - within our lifetimes, or even several lifetimes, but if AGI really does spawn and solve all problems immediately the head has to come back up. If AGI never spawns, we might still effectively solve all human-scale problems with the assistance of sub-human AI and brute-force within a surprisingly short time.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#622

Post by bentinata »

tpmoney wrote: post #574
rekabis wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The people who are upset by this change, in my experience, are all the people who would answer that a programmer's job is to write code. The people who are happy about this change, are those who would answer a programmer's job is to produce value. Think of it another way: You are a bricklayer, who is proud to build brick walls that are as strong and as elegant as possible, capable of withstanding earthquakes and veh…

> You are a bricklayer, who is proud to build brick walls that are as strong and as elegant as possible, capable of withstanding earthquakes and vehicle impacts, while using as few bricks as possible and introducing as few flaws as possible. The walls you build can stand for decades without significant maintenance. I think we like to think of ourselves like this a lot, and perhaps with infinite money and time we coul…

Yet you can look for accountability in all the data breach, Windows ME, GIMP, or unreliable bluetooth. I would take bricklayers that can reason and say "yeah, we need to delay because the nearest brick factory is currently in low supply", instead of a robot that will yeet bricks that no one can understand why. I value the human.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#623

Post by fingerlocks »

DaSHacka wrote: post #607
fingerlocks wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Uh, no? It obviously matters.

The market for small batch locally made produce is huge. Entire grocery stores dedicated to local organic offerings is the standard in every upper middle class neighborhood on the entire west coast. The reason is obvious: a salad made with crappy tomatoes is a crappy salad.

We aren’t at this point in software yet because most consumers of software have no taste

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#624

Post by beej71 »

someguynamedq wrote: post #424
beej71 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes. You are falling behind. And yes, it will reduce your value in the job market. Eventually it will be a dramatic reduction. I think this cuts close to the heart of it. "That knowledge has no value" isn't an easy pill to swallow for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is that your value as a developer has gone down. You're not going to get paid for coding, and the market is getting flooded with peop…

Using LLMs to write code is only boring if you're only trying to make the same boring things you were capable of doing when writing it by hand.

The opposite is true for me. Using LLMs to write things that I can easily write by hand is the most fun use case for LLMs. It's when I use them to write things that would be difficult to write by hand (e.g. for me, a video encoder, compiler, or game engine) that the fun is stolen.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#625

Post by 59percentmore »

rafabulsing wrote: post #597
59percentmore wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The thing, which anyone who's ever done any type of art realizes, is that 99% of the time, there isn't really such a thing as a high fidelity image in your mind's eye. You feel like there is... But the minute you try to bring it into creation, you find out just how absurdly fuzzy it really is. A non-artist might believe that the failure of bringing your mind image to life is a failure of _skill_. That you are just ph…

>Looking at an AI output and deciding whether it happens to match the fuzzy idea you had enough or not, simply isn't the same thing.

Yes, it is. I say this as someone with a BFA. The feeling of a happy accident from a slip of the tablet pen and a "mistake" in the generation is the exact same: "I wasn't expecting that, but it works." Same when it's an unhappy one: "That's wrong, we need to fix that."

I don't care to spend time antagonizing you with speculation on why you have this wrong, but I can say this with certainty: at the high level of determining if something that I am willing into being, through interfacing with a process and tools outside myself, aligns with my vision and taste, there is no substantive difference between gen AI and traditional methods beyond that which exists between any two given traditional methods.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#626

Post by beej71 »

ricardobayes wrote: post #466
beej71 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a definite maybe. You can bet there's a general movement afoot to replace teachers with AI because it's cheaper and always available, etc. Also, measuring the human advantage is difficult.

I would refute that since it's obvious (using a strong word here), that digital anything in the classroom is really bad[0] and consistently led to lower PISA scores. Perhaps there will be some initial changes in the wrong direction with more digitalization but eventually common sense is going to prevail. And concerned mom groups are incredibly powerful these days. Parents are going to freak out the moment a recording…

I absolutely agree with you. Unfortunately, those decisions are above my pay grade. But here's hoping the moms can drive the point home!

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#627

Post by dgabriel »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #587
dgabriel wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish I could press a button and erase everyone who thinks that way from existence. How dare you devalue my experience and passion so offhandedly and treat it like I'm the asshole for being upset by it. It's possible that wishing instant death on people may make you unpopular. But also, maybe you're a poet or artist now. No one makes money of the years of toil it takes to become an expert at that craft, either. If…

>If the craft is important, then the money is secondary the money is secondary. Sadly, rent is primary. Give me enough to retire and I'll happily spend the rest of my days on my craft. Until then, the options are combining your craft, minmaxing your career to minimize work (too late for me), or to do something else that pays the bills for the next 30 years. And the cost to retrain isn't cheap either.

That's most people. You have a day job that pays the bills, and you have your passion and art that fulfills you. You had the great temporary luck to have both for a bit, but it's not coming back. I don't feel sorry for us, and it's not helpful to carry so much animosity.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#628

Post by tpmoney »

bentinata wrote: post #622
tpmoney wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are a bricklayer, who is proud to build brick walls that are as strong and as elegant as possible, capable of withstanding earthquakes and vehicle impacts, while using as few bricks as possible and introducing as few flaws as possible. The walls you build can stand for decades without significant maintenance. I think we like to think of ourselves like this a lot, and perhaps with infinite money and time we coul…

Yet you can look for accountability in all the data breach, Windows ME, GIMP, or unreliable bluetooth. I would take bricklayers that can reason and say "yeah, we need to delay because the nearest brick factory is currently in low supply", instead of a robot that will yeet bricks that no one can understand why. I value the human.

You can look for accountability. You probably won’t find it. But I’m also not saying there isn’t value in humans.

I am saying that we all have worked on projects where “artisanal software development” bore as much resemblance to our process as an abstract art painting does to reality. We’ve all worked with plenty of coworkers (and maybe have even been that coworker ourselves) who just punches the clock. We’ve all worked with developers who have had 1 year of experience for 30 years in a row. Everyone knows the average piece of software being produced is a buggy mess and it’s amazing it all works at all. Hell our industry coined the phrase “worse is better” and “move fast and break things”. To turn around now and pretend that we’re actually all master craftsmen, regularly constructing artifices of pure beauty and logic that will stand the tests of time is a bit silly.

Sure I would take a real human over a YOLO coded piece of software any day. But I’d also take a real application over an excel macro monstrosity any day too. That doesn’t mean excel macros don’t have their place or that they aren’t used to produce things of real value.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#629

Post by tpmoney »

whstl wrote: post #617
tpmoney wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So what? Just because you had one way to do something before, that means having a different way of doing it is useless? We have the C language, and it’s been letting people write applications for decades. Does that mean there’s no value in other programming languages?

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#630

Post by card_zero »

Chris2048 wrote: post #620
eszed wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Dwarf Fortress (the ASCII version) was exhibited in MoMA. I think software sits in an interesting place between shovels and Fabergé eggs.
Post reply on HN