Making • Hacker News Board

Re: Making

#161

Post by relativeadv » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

Oh boy, my useless art degree is coming in handy here! This is precisely like the authorship debates that occurred when Warhol hit the scene, or Damien Hirst and many others. It goes further back than that. Duchamp and his urinal, renaissance painters and their workshops. On and on, artists making work for other artists and people debating whether the signee is the one who really created it. "Authorship" is the term for this debate.

If you choose to side with the modern art establishment, this has been a settled debate for decades. Managing signs, systems, instructions, and context is itself a creative act.

If you choose to side with the atelier movement (as one example) it would be a resounding "no". This does not count.

Re: Making

#162

Post by HumblyTossed » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #53

planb wrote: post #20

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single line of code for it. I wouldn’t show it around and proclaim what a great programmer I am, because I did not program it, but coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product. When I plan a remake of my garden and then hire…

> don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it. So like when I went to a restaurant last week and "made" a cheeseburger with no lettuce and extra onions, because it wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it. To me, making something can mean you did the physical work of its creation even if there's no particular creative expression, like "I made a peanut butter and jelly sandw…

Interesting. I'm not sure if I'm on one side of this or the other.

I enjoy cooking. I grab a recipe and start gathering ingredients and prep them and then cook them. The food usually turns out really good (I have a lot of practice, you see, I'm getting up in age and I've done this for a log time). So, the question is, am I any less of a cook because I follow someone else's recipe instead of writing my own? To make this even more interesting, I was cooking for some friends some years ago, and one said the food was great. The other mentioned well, it must have been a good recipe. I have to admit that stung a bit. They didn't mean it that way though.

I'm rambling, but the question is, at what point is something _your_ work?

Re: Making

#163

Post by liminal-dev » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:34 PM UTC

voidUpdate wrote: post #150

liminal-dev wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with this line of reasoning. To the same extent, I could say that you did not make an app because you didn’t write the compiled assembly code, build the processor, make the silicone yourself, etc. Tools are tools. Same as Photoshop, Ableton, they get you to where you want to go. Where is the line drawn?

Silicone: rubbery, used for kitchen utensils and breast implants Silicon: Metallic, used for making circuit components

Oops.

Re: Making

#164

Post by brailsafe » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

HumblyTossed wrote: post #162

wlesieutre wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it. So like when I went to a restaurant last week and "made" a cheeseburger with no lettuce and extra onions, because it wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it. To me, making something can mean you did the physical work of its creation even if there's no particular creative expression, like "I made a peanut butter and jelly sandw…

Interesting. I'm not sure if I'm on one side of this or the other. I enjoy cooking. I grab a recipe and start gathering ingredients and prep them and then cook them. The food usually turns out really good (I have a lot of practice, you see, I'm getting up in age and I've done this for a log time). So, the question is, am I any less of a cook because I follow someone else's recipe instead of writing my own? To make th…

Seems to me that is what it means to be a cook. If you make food or you make recipes, you can be proud of what you did. If you want to create recipes from scratch, that's an increased level of risk, but if you're a good cook, maybe you can apply your taste and come up with a new concoction that your friends love, whether someone else has done it already or not.

Seems also pretty similar to carpentry. My grandfather assembled his cabin from a kit but modified it to taste, making it his own; he built it but did not create it as a whole. He did however create the deck that's affixed to the cabin, and his shed, by measuring out the basic dimensions, cutting and planing all the wood, maintaining it for decades, attaching doors etc..

When I made a document rendering system at my last company, I was proud to have made the system, but I did not make the all of the technology within it, and that seems like a fair distinction. The tools are part of the process of making, but if you are no longer using tools directly, you haven't really made much.

If you've made a bot that plays a game for you, you don't get to say you're playing the game, and if you haven't prepared any ingredients for a meal, you haven't made a meal

Re: Making

#165

Post by hatefulmoron » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

apsurd wrote: post #129

planb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to be downvoting you because they don't want it to be this way, but I feel you're absolutely correct and this in inevitable. No matter how we - 2026 - feel about it, this will be the norm for future generations.

I just watched The Odyssey this evening. Loved it! These stories were passed down in song over thousands of years. Humanity scale type stuff. Thousands of years of spoken and written language based connections. And it’s all survived. Durable. So I just sit here and think and laugh wow the ego on us. Call me aged out but im not so sure that your vibe coded app or that tik tok upload is gonna hit the same in 5080.

> Call me aged out but im not so sure that your vibe coded app or that tik tok upload is gonna hit the same in 5080.

This is true of almost anything: past, present, or future. Most of everything is shit.

Re: Making

#166

Post by whywhywhywhy » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

planb wrote: post #127

echelon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future people will look back on this transitional time with curiosity. This is all going to be a non-issue in time. The fairy path of human language is going to adopt "creation" as assuming someone could have prompted it. It's the path of least resistance, and it's something that will only increase in normality in our daily lives and experience. Nobody in the future is going to have these paragraphs-long diatribes ab…

People seem to be downvoting you because they don't want it to be this way, but I feel you're absolutely correct and this in inevitable. No matter how we - 2026 - feel about it, this will be the norm for future generations.

We know it's not inevitable because people are sticklers about the process of creation today.

People claim certain artists work is uninteresting because they didn't paint or sculpt it themselves but instead acted as more of a creative director.

People claim The Odyssey has more value because its physical effects and uses film not digital.

People claim digital art/digital photography isn't real art/photography still.

It's not an insignificant number of people but yeah it's definitely not everyone too but there are definitely ones born way after the argument was already settled on a lot of these things and still argue it. Will be mostly interesting to see how children today think about the value and ownership of education, knowledge, art, etc in a world where they're completely devalued and democratized and if they still have people who think it's not art if you didn't paint it and it's not your work if you didn't think it.

Re: Making

#167

Post by subscribed » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 1:58 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #53

planb wrote: post #20

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single line of code for it. I wouldn’t show it around and proclaim what a great programmer I am, because I did not program it, but coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product. When I plan a remake of my garden and then hire…

> don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it. So like when I went to a restaurant last week and "made" a cheeseburger with no lettuce and extra onions, because it wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it. To me, making something can mean you did the physical work of its creation even if there's no particular creative expression, like "I made a peanut butter and jelly sandw…

So you did not build a wardrobe unless you cut, dried and sliced your tree yourself, and used muscle powered tools.

Power tools or buying kiln-dried planks is forbidden, you might as well go to IKEA, buy you set and claim you "built" it.

You cannot also claim you built a custom sensor for your smart home if you based it on ESP32 and any of the ecosystem tooling. You might as well buy it from Phillips or Siemens if it exists, or just sit in the corner and sulk. Using advanced tools is forbidden.

I swear luddites are going more and more extreme in their analogies.

Re: Making

#168

Post by wsng » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #160

echelon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future people will look back on this transitional time with curiosity. This is all going to be a non-issue in time. The fairy path of human language is going to adopt "creation" as assuming someone could have prompted it. It's the path of least resistance, and it's something that will only increase in normality in our daily lives and experience. Nobody in the future is going to have these paragraphs-long diatribes ab…

> Nobody bickers about the definition of "photograph". Uh, yeah, because there's nothing to bicker about in the definition of a photograph itself. But people absolutely do not view photographers the same way they view illustrators. Nobody would ever, in a million years, consider you an artist because you snapped a selfie. You also don't "make" a photograph, you "take" a photograph (and this kind of distinction exists…

Photographs now are presented in museums as work of art, and their creators are considered as artists.

And me skribbling an illustration on a piece of paper doesn’t make me an artist the same way taking a selfie doesn’t make me an artist.

That shows that something being art and someone being an artist has nothing to do with the medium and the used tools.

Re: Making

#169

Post by storkhound » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

haickernews wrote: post #86

This article has a narrow view of "making" which is stuck hopelessly in the past, in my honest opinion. A human in the loop guiding the process is 100% making something, no matter how much you torture the definition of "make." When I write software with Claude, I'm the one with the agency, not Claude. Without me, the software wouldn't even exist. A director "makes" movies. A collage artist "makes" images. A fisherman…

There's a word for what you're doing there: equivocation.

> A director "makes" movies.

You clearly don't appreciate what that means. It's a deeply creative and involved process, not just waving a film into being with their flapping arms. Moreover, there are dozens to hundreds (or more!) people working as a team on everything from sets to cameras to post-production to ...

When we say a director "made" that movie, we don't mean that was the extent of the making, nor do we mean they did no heavy lifting themselves. Neither of those sentiments are true.

> A collage artist "makes" images

They do! You seem to be trying to equivocate their use of previous components to create a new expression directly with .. well .. not.

A more accurate analogy here between software development and the collage artist might be using libraries others have written in your projects from which you create something new.

Collage is not the same process or product as directing an LLM. Again, equivocation.

> A fisherman "makes" a catch.

Words have more than one meaning, but the meanings can be (and in this case, are) divergent. "Synonyms", they are called!

Literally equivocating, and entirely meaningless.

> Someone searching YouTube and clicking on a video "makes" a video.

Literally nobody says this, thinks this, or refers to the act in this way.

This is taking equivocation into "making up new meanings from whole cloth" territory.

> These are widely agreed upon definitions

No, they aren't. You're making an argument hoping it justifies your choices, but mostly just demonstrating you don't understand the words you are using.

> so it should not be

Your premise is rubbish, so there can be no "so...".

If you wish to use LLMs to spit out source code, that's your choice to make. How hard is it for you to just also own the fact that the act is not a creative one, and you are "making" in the same way that a customer delivering a set of requirements to a dev team is "making" software. There ought to be no shame in that if it isn't shameful.

Re: Making

#170

Post by storkhound » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

skydhash wrote: post #110

2III7 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people have a disillusion that an LLM is something more than a tool.

Git is also a tool, but cloning a repo does not means I created the software.

Exactly. It also doesn't obscure the original property rights or licensing, nor can it be done without permission of the owner.

The LLM crowd just loves the idea that all tools are equivalent with the same set primary-, secondary-, and side-effects, a false claim used as low-effort universal self-absolution.