Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage • Hacker News Board

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#241

Post by djtango » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 7:48 AM UTC

Schnitz wrote: post #207

djtango wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hobby should only become job if you enjoy the craft of it and if the profession / job rewards craftsmanship. People in it just for the money won't care about craft - you see the same thing in plumbing. And when there's enough money and scale on the line, craft becomes progressively more niche - that is why Ikea furniture is a thing. And you can even say that there is craft in Ikea, just not along the axes a tradition…

This is such a great point and raises existential career questions for everyone who got into a programming career because they love the craft. Either find your niche where craft will matter until you retire, leave the profession or accept that it’s now mostly about prompting. It’s almost like everyone’s being promoted into management or tech leading and can’t refuse…

I think it was implied through the conversation but the other thing I have come to realise is that your hobby and craft should be about producing not consuming. Too many people think they like videogames or films and think they should therefore work in the industry only to be crushed by the industry. Even being a youtuber devolves into hours of storyboarding, editing and engagement farming which are orthogonal to your hobby.

With respect to code it's a little murky but I guess the tension really is enjoying the process enough while being able to output the desired quality, volume and velocity required of you.

Quality is usually the stickler because it's invisible to the end user and requirement setter but sometimes quality affects both ergonomics and future delivery and sometimes it's purely self-satisfactory. That isn't a value judgment, making things well is a gratifying and edifying experience - so much so that this practice overlaps with Shinto philosophy.... but not many people are going to pay you to have that experience.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#242

Post by jrapdx3 » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 7:58 AM UTC

madmask wrote: post #232

jrapdx3 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... multi-tasking is not a strength, it's a sign of distraction Interesting point of view from one who's been there. Intuitively the comment makes a lot of sense. In a way human multitasking resembles how single-threaded computer programs work. That is, we focus on one task at a time but tasks can be interleaved to give an illusion of doing several tasks at the same time. Managing several tasks requires remembering…

Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this. If only I properly remembered and agreed on what I wanted to do yesterday it would be fantastic. Even if I write it down and happen to remember to check the notes, it’s almost like I was a different person yesterday, todays priorities are all new

> Not diagnosed, on online “tests” I score just shy of the ADHD threshold, and I find myself in this.

Don't know the tests you refer to, but it's recognized that many adults have ADHD symptoms not quite meeting DSM-5 criteria for ADHD. It's called "subsyndromal" ADHD which causes as much disability and responds to treatment just as well as "full" ADHD cases. IOW it's absurd to regard someone with 6 symptoms as belonging in a different category vs. a person having "only" 5 symptoms. Anyway, ADHD is a condition that usually responds to treatment, no reason not to check into it.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#243

Post by rob74 » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 7:58 AM UTC

fhd2 wrote: post #229

alkonaut wrote: post #224

Programming has five phases effectively: 1) You figure out what problem to solve. 2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem. 3) You actually implement the solution. 4) You see the solution work, for yourself. 5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on. If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you s…

Nice analysis! I would perhaps add that LLMs are pretty helpful at (2) in my experience, as long as you don't turn your brain off. (As a Google/SO replacement, mainly.) I have about three modes, working with LLMs: A) Just use them for (2), do (3) and (4) myself. B) Just use them for (2) and (3), but with very fine grained instructions - to the point where it barely saves me time. C) Use them for (2), (3) and (4), but…

Regarding (2) figuring out how to do things at a higher level (e.g. the general architecture of an application) is pretty different from figuring out things at a lower level (e.g. how to fill text with a certain gradient in CSS - the stuff where years ago you would have spent hours reading documentation or browsing StackOverflow until you figured it out, if you weren't familiar with the topic). So you could use an LLM just for (2b) and (3) and do the rest yourself.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#244

Post by rob74 » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:01 AM UTC

Schnitz wrote: post #166

Because people that enjoy programming for programming's sake don't want an LLM to do the programming for them - isn't it obvious? It's just like with any other hobby, people who like car racing created rules that force you to drive yourself, even though they'd get faster lap times with electronic driver aids. People who enjoy grappling created rules that force you to grapple, even though striking could win a fight fa…

True, but it sounded a bit paradoxical to me that the people who work on engines designed to beat humans at chess were themselves opposed to using engines that (arguably) beat humans at programming...

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#245

Post by ericd » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:14 AM UTC

ryandvm wrote: post #41

QuantumNoodle wrote: post #4

A hobby is something you enjoy the process of doing, not just the end result. Everybody likes a clean home, but cleaning is rarely a hobby. LLMs expedite achieving the end result. Take from that what you will.

Yeah, in my experience, the people that got into software engineering because of the money are absolutely thrilled with how LLMs are changing the industry. They mostly just liked getting results and LLMs are great for that. The people like me that sort of just stumbled into this career as a result of spending the evenings of our youth trying to get the computer to do interesting things don't seem to have as much appr…

I don't think that's quite fair. Computers have been my hobby since I was 4, I'm having a blast, this is so much fun. I've always had way more ideas I wanted to try than I've had time/energy to implement, especially true since having kids, now the implementation can almost keep up.

Computers were on a trajectory of becoming more consumption oriented, and this has shifted it strongly back towards creation. Normal people can make their own custom software again. This is awesome.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#246

Post by kkoncevicius » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:14 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #224

Programming has five phases effectively: 1) You figure out what problem to solve. 2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem. 3) You actually implement the solution. 4) You see the solution work, for yourself. 5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on. If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you s…

Looking at your ladder, made me think where I fit in and I mostly enjoy steps 1 and 2. The implementation and shipping are big chores to me. Once I know, half in my head, that the problem is solvable and I could see a path towards implementation I loose motivation to continue.

So possibly there are other classes of people, not just either enterpreneur or thinkerer. Thou not sure what this combination is, maybe something more like R&D.

And LLMs give a lot of value here. They allow to quickly do steps 2-3 - "hard and tedious" stuff - to confirm that the thing, in fact, became solvable.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#247

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:15 AM UTC

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #240

alkonaut wrote: post #224

Programming has five phases effectively: 1) You figure out what problem to solve. 2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem. 3) You actually implement the solution. 4) You see the solution work, for yourself. 5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on. If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you s…

> If you're a tinkerer, you don't care much for 1 and 5, and you see 2-4 as the whole point of programming. I'm a tinkerer. I'd be happy to just write code and throw it away. Coding is like solving sudokus. I could skip steps 1 and 5 forever. [...] The 5 phases look kind of symmetric. The outermost layer (1 and 5) are the entrepreneurial steps. Even if you deeply into tinkering, 1 can be an insanely exciting and rewa…

Yeah. I enjoy 2-4 most, 1 is the next, and 5 the least. I think the litmus test here is "if you knew could never deliver this to anyone, make money of it, get recognition for it, or even make it solve one of your own problems you have. Would you still be willing to spend time on it?"

If the answer is "no" you are probably more entrepreneurial than tinkerer. But it's a spectrum.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#248

Post by whstl » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:17 AM UTC

Thanemate wrote: post #206

GPerson wrote: post #200

Programming is nice because you have lots of different scales of structure to think about, and your program slowly comes together. You see it improving over time as a result of your efforts. You also build your skills and learn. It’s really a nice activity. AI systems basically change that whole formula. I’m not sure how people get joy out of constantly vibe coding new projects. It feels like binge watching Netflix s…

>I’m not sure how people get joy out of constantly vibe coding new projects. It feels like binge watching Netflix shows. It's just power fantasy. It's amazing the first couple of times but as it wears off and becomes the new norm you forgot how being the one who decides which thing does what feels like. Luckily (or unluckily?) the industry only cares about the end result, and flushes out people who used to reward for…

A lot of this is from non-tech workers wanting to expand their repertoire as well.

They have no clue what they're doing programming-wise, and in some cases this is perfectly fine, but after years of SaaS, some people are taking it to extremes, and spending millions of tokens on things that could be a spreadsheet or a note in the calendar.

Just recently we had someone deliver a report in the format of a 200.000 LOC application that requires several clusters to run, for example. It does all querying in real time from clandestine APIs, or by crawling existing systems. The person who asked for the report asked for it not to be deployed.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#249

Post by retsibsi » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:32 AM UTC

drcxd wrote: post #162

Chance-Device wrote: post #8

Well of course, if you enjoy writing software as a hobby then you value the experience of doing it, and you value the skill involved. You probably want a community of like minded individuals who all write code by hand, and where LLM use would be considered cheating. That seems as natural as being against doping in sports or marking cards in poker. None of this is anything against LLMs or AI assisted coding in general…

Yeah, it's just how you see programming in your perspective. It's like lifting weight. Obviously, machines lift weight much better than human for a long time. But people still trains for strength or aesthetics. Even if machine can lift much larger weight and more efficiently, some people still care about how strong they are. A machine can lift much more weight obviously is not the excuse for them to stop training. Pr…

I don't exactly disagree, but I don't think your analogies work.

Machines can lift more weight than humans, but we all encounter situations where strength is useful and machines aren't available or wouldn't be suited to the task.

Cars are faster and easier than walking, but they require roads and are not a possible substitute for all of the walking we do.

But "if LLMs can solve all coding problems perfectly", and assuming that's sufficiently true of cheap/free models, there will be no practical need to code by hand; it'll be something we do purely for the joy of it and/or as brain training (but a niche form of brain training, probably practically inferior to other forms that target skills we still need).

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#250

Post by curtisblaine » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:44 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #224

Programming has five phases effectively: 1) You figure out what problem to solve. 2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem. 3) You actually implement the solution. 4) You see the solution work, for yourself. 5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on. If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you s…

I might be weird, but I love phases 2 to 5 and I hate phase 1 with a passion. I hate speaking with people to see what their problems are. I want to solve problems, not user surveys. And all the itches I have are either already solved, not itchy enough or too wide / ambitious to approach them solo. If LLMs solved exclusively 1 and told me "this problem is actually valuable, go and solve it", I would be the happiest person in the world. It's not true that ideas are cheap. Or better: ideas themselves are dirty cheap, good ideas are invaluable.