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AI coding is gambling

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Re: AI coding is gambling

#401

Post by the_af »

gpt5 wrote: post #366
maplethorpe wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was a website called InfiniteAppStore, which contained every app imaginable, and where you could type in your search and it would return the code for that app, would you find that as satisfying to use as Claude Code? On the surface this does not sound as satisfying, because it more resembles shopping than coding. But once Claude Code is finally tuned to do its job perfectly, you will essentially be using tha…

In that scenario the 'joy of creation' would just shift to the 'joy of discovery'. Both of which are innate to humans.

> In that scenario the 'joy of creation' would just shift to the 'joy of discovery'. Both of which are innate to humans.

They may be innate, but that doesn't mean they are related or that one is a good substitute for the other.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#402

Post by beepbooptheory »

pdntspa wrote: post #330
beepbooptheory wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I really really love cooking. In fact, I have optimized my cooking completely, I go out to restaurants every night!" I believe gp and others just like food instead of cooking. Which is fine, but if that's the case, why go around telling everyone you're a cook?

"I thought using loops was cheating, so I programmed my own using samples. I thought using samples was cheating, so I recorded real drums. I thought that was cheating, so I learned to play. I thought using purchased drums was cheating, so I made my own. I thought using pre-made skins was cheating, so I killed a goat and skinned it. I thought that was cheating too, so I raised my own goats from birth. I haven't made a…

Yeah, yeah we get it. Does anyone have a different response? Or, equally acceptable, can anyone unpack this one and its siblings?

As far as I can tell, my implicit argument doesn't really rest on some kind fallacious threshold on really doing the thing, or not, right? I never said anything about "cheating." I'm just asking why we got a lot chefs who don't wanna cook.

Like would yall be happy if we maybe just come up with a different word? Why do you need to be an AI user and also "programmer"? What about: "no I don't like coding, but I do love generating apps.."?

Like following the (presumed) logic here we should say that all visual artists are just wannabe photographers. Or we'd might discover an abandoned house in the woods and then feel legitimized to say we built it, because really, the end product is the same right?

AI guys, I implore you, the world is literally yours. Mountains will be moved for your cause. You are the winner, the hegemonic force for the forseeable future. Why can't yall just be happy being what you are? Why cling to titles from an obsolete world? Where you really want to be "programmer" and "artist"? These things have nothing for you, if you believe in this radically different future so much, why even be concerned as being the same kinds of things as us dumb luddites?

I think you should just use your agential blahblah to start a one-person B2B SaaS, make a lot of money, and move on. At no point will it matter what you called yourself!

Re: AI coding is gambling

#403

Post by the_af »

devanil wrote: post #397
jarjoura wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say, you are at the phase of this journey where you're feeling empowered. It's just one step along the path of AI adoption to execute on an idea and see in near real-time the idea you had baked in your head come alive in front of you. Most of us get to this point and become the biggest evangelists of the tech. I see no reason you should feel guilty for the excitement you're feeling right now, and you should enjoy…

Don't you think that's overreacting? I know it's an important moment for us, but your speech sounds kind of theological. Almost condemning him to hell for "feeling pleasure."

There's no condemning at all in the comment you're replying to, in fact the opposite: there's understanding.

It's very weird because judging from this comment, and some other comment you wrote asking whether the other person believed creation requires hard work (which wasn't at all what they said), makes it seem as if you aren't reading the comments you're replying to.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#404

Post by leptons »

devanil wrote: post #395
leptons wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust me, the two are not the same, and are orders of magnitude different in terms of human satisfaction. When I walk down a street, I get 10 people stopping me to ask "Where did you get that?". When I tell them I made it, their heads explode. I know which side of that interaction is more satisfying. We also go all-out for Halloween, and at the big Halloween festival there is literally a line down the street of peopl…

Do you think that creation only comes with hard work?

Who said it was hard work?

The satisfaction comes from actually doing a thing that improves your own skill, instead of having a thing done for you.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#405

Post by the_af »

estimator7292 wrote: post #343
itsgrimetime wrote: post #92

All of this new capability has made me realize that the reason i love programming _isn't_ the same as the OP. I used to think (and tell others) that I loved understanding something deeply, wading through the details to figure out a tough problem. but actually, being able to will anything I can think of into existence is what I love about programming. I do feel for the people who were able to make careers out of falli…

For me the joy comes from the understanding that the answer to "Is xyz possible ?" is always, always "yes". It might be difficult, expensive, or take a long time, but my stance as an engineer is that anything is possible. Hyperbole, yes, many things are in fact, not possible. But most people have the size of the two categories confused. The number of things that are categorically impossible is less than a rounding er…

What's the basis for this assertion? It seems wild:

> The number of things that are categorically impossible is less than a rounding error compared to how many things are possible.

If it's just a case of keeping a positive attitude and self-help, I can accept it. A sort of white lie one tells themselves.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#406

Post by itsgrimetime »

bakugo wrote: post #258
itsgrimetime wrote: post #92

All of this new capability has made me realize that the reason i love programming _isn't_ the same as the OP. I used to think (and tell others) that I loved understanding something deeply, wading through the details to figure out a tough problem. but actually, being able to will anything I can think of into existence is what I love about programming. I do feel for the people who were able to make careers out of falli…

> Going to McDonalds made me realize that the reason I love cooking isn't the actual cooking itself. Being able to order a food at McDonalds and getting it without doing anything myself is the best part about cooking! Now that I only eat McDonalds, I feel like I'm _good_ at cooking. You do not like and have never liked programming. You wanted to be a manager. They are completely different things.

a lot of the replies on here (not just yours, I just picked yours to respond to) make it clear I didn't articulate what I was meaning to very well - I'm still doing the "engineering". I used "programming" in a more general sense: building stuff with computers. I still go through the same motions. I try something, hit some failure mode, have to think of and (with the help of claude) execute on that, evaluate it, decide if its better or not, identify when the agent is off track or deviating from the vision I have, etc.

it seems you and others took my words a bit more literally than I intended for them to come across. it's not like I'm just one-shotting all my ideas directly into existence, I still need to understand how to use the tool to do it. it's just a different tool. one that's allowing me to build way more than I ever have, while having a ton of fun doing it.

and sure, your analogy seems reasonable if I was simply buying the code w/ my tokens. that wouldn't be fun or fulfilling at all - it's more like there is some new "cooking" tool that immediately spawns 90% of the ingredients pre-cut & prepped (maybe the other 10% isn't exactly what I asked for but I can improvise with it) and gives me a decent recipe based on the idea of what I wanted to cook in the first place that fills in (and gives me a starting point to learn about) the gaps that I didn't even realize I was missing. I see it more as: "All this time I thought I loved chopping onions and setting up the grill, but actually I just loved cooking".

you weren't wrong about the mcdonalds though. I do love mcdonalds

Re: AI coding is gambling

#407

Post by QuiEgo »

If I were going to make a gambling analogy, I'd imagine a casino game as follows: draw a card from a standard playing card deck. If it's a spade you lose. Otherwise you win.

For any one hand you may win or lose, but on average you should still take the "gamble" every time, because the odds are so good you'll win. That's what using AI is like right now.

This is a new state of things - a year ago, the analogy would have been reversed.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#408

Post by gpt5 »

the_af wrote: post #401
gpt5 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that scenario the 'joy of creation' would just shift to the 'joy of discovery'. Both of which are innate to humans.

> In that scenario the 'joy of creation' would just shift to the 'joy of discovery'. Both of which are innate to humans. They may be innate, but that doesn't mean they are related or that one is a good substitute for the other.

I agree. Thinking about it a little more, I've realized that people create things today even if unnecessary (e.g. grow their own food), a lot of it for the satisfaction of it.

So we would still build stuff, but it would not be out of necessity.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#409

Post by cgg23 »

supern0va wrote: post #208
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I finally feel like I'm _good_ at programming, which is insane Yes, it is insane. You couldn't torture this confession out of me. But that's the drug they're selling you, isn't it? You don't even write code, but you're getting a self-inflated sense of worth. It must be addicting! Of course, whether or not the programs you prompt are actually good surely has no relation to whether you feel they're good, since yo…

>Anyone can be an "ideas guy". I think there's way more nuance to this than you're willing to admit here. There's a significant difference between the guy who thinks "I'm going to make X app to do Y and get loaded." and the person who really understands the details of what they want to create and has a concrete vision of how to shape it. I think that product shaping and detail oriented vision of how something should…

Disagree massively.

A proper PM should be moving towards owning design and marketing pieces - not production of software. Software is a means to package an experience captured by the design and communicated via marketing. It's that simple.

Most PMs don't match this description. So I understand the frustration's of engineers who have had to work with PMs.

Re: AI coding is gambling

#410

Post by cgg23 »

r-w wrote: post #283
bluefirebrand wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very difficult to get the machine to do what you want without the detailed instructions If you have an LLM generate the instructions, then the LLM is programming, you're just a "prompter" or something. Not a programmer

Exactly. There's a probabilistic machine in between you and every instruction that gets executed, without exception. It's straight up different.

Im concerned that people are debating over this lol.
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