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Fuck it, make it anyway

joelotter.com

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Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#411

Post by someguynamedq »

moron4hire wrote: post #278
CuriouslyC wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're projecting, and there are plenty of people in crafts who are using AI output as an input to their own works who are having a blast. AI images make amazing collages/photobash inputs, and AI music is useful to sample or use as inspiration for parts you're stuck on. These people just keep quiet about their use because of the witch hunts being persecuted by people who are afraid of change. AI use in creative field…

I go to a lot of craft fairs and I've been seeing people using AI to make their banners or book covers or detail designs on mugs and such. Here are people playing a "support local creators" line and they won't support their own local graphic designers. There was one booth two shows ago that I particularly remember as it was selling "paintings" of pastoral scenes and wild life, "painted" on to log slices. This is a fa…

Why do you care? If it's bad people won't buy it. If people buy it, it's only bad to you

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#412

Post by someguynamedq »

bigmadshoe wrote: post #251
codazoda wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is almost to say that the only part of the project that matters is the code. But the code is only a tiny part. I take joy in describing the thing and bringing that vision to life.

You didn't bring anything to life. You just described it.

Completely arbitrary distinction. Effort is not more valuable than the results of the effort. This is a mindset that will keep you trapped.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#413

Post by spoiler »

GMoromisato wrote: post #392

Think of the classic Venn diagram, the intersection of: 1. Things I enjoy doing. 2. Things I am good at doing. 3. Things people value me doing. The problem with AI is that it potentially changes all three of those bubbles. 1. Sure, AI is powerful, but maybe I don't enjoy coding that way. 2. I'm really good at C++, but I'm not very good at prompting (at least no better than anyone else). 3. No one hires me anymore bec…

> No one hires me anymore because AI can do my job cheaper.

As someone who thinks AI is an incredible tool, I think your job is safe. Are there incompetent companies that are replacing people with AI? Yup... But also, I'm pretty sure most people don't want to work at companies with such poor management anyway? So in a way, I think AI is prefiltering incompetent management for us.

On you other two points: I kinda feel you, but I'm finding ways of enjoying my work with AI. It's been a bit of a shift and I'm still adjusting probably, but it feels like it's getting better. I never really enjoyed "typing" code, but the creative process of designing solutions and building the. And I never thought typing was the "building" part, it was just an unavoidable mechanical "obstacle" (not using the word obstacle as a bad thing necessarily, but idk it's just typing you know?)

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#414

Post by someguynamedq »

acedTrex wrote: post #378
namr2000 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with this sentiment, and have a hard time describing anything LLM generated as "mine". However, would you say that the designers at Apple, or Steve Jobs for example didn't "bring the Macintosh to life" because they didn't work on any of the engineering or code? It's a hard line to draw.

No, its a very easy line to draw. Rallying and bringing together humans is COMPLETELY different than having an LLM do something. They are not comparable.

No you're just drawing a new arbitrary distinction

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#415

Post by e584 »

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…

[dead]

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#416

Post by hax0ron3 »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #45
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…

Personally, I think a lot of the enjoyment comes from learning to overcome challenges. Jumping in to an unfamiliar problem space, sucking at it, then grinding until it all clicks. Generative AI takes away the grind, which takes away the learning. How do I master a new language if I'm expected to code via an LLM from day 1? It's also well understood that the act of writing is when thinking actually happens. You have n…

>It's also well understood that the act of writing is when thinking actually happens.

For me the more interesting and productive thinking happens when I'm trying to understand what I want the code to do, not when I'm thinking about the implementation details.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#417

Post by someguynamedq »

ryandrake wrote: post #232
bakugo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That is almost to say that the only part of the meal that matters is the cooking. But the cooking is only a tiny part. I take joy in describing the food I want and bringing that vision to life."

Or like going to the gym but using a forklift to lift the weights. Yes, barbells are traveling up and down, but is that the point of going to the gym?

Bad example. This is analogous to people prompting an LLM to "generate code for the sake of it" which of course nobody is doing.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#418

Post by michaelrpeskin »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #317
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…

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.

I don't think it's as much as opening up what we _could_ do, it's opening up time so that more can be done.

Slop is too generic of a complaint. Do LLMs write code exactly how I would? No. Is my way right? Probably not. But what LLMs are great at are pre-emptively thinking about edge cases that I forget when writing the code. I'm surprised as how many fewer weird bugs come back to me now after a release. Should I have thought of them? Yes probably, but I don't and they do. So in practice, I do think LLMs write better code than me (if you look at results not the actual code itself).

But more importantly is that it allows me to take on projects that I never would have. Some of them are personal projects, some of them are work projects. I often didn't even consider a project because the time it would take _me_ to do it would not be worth the value. But now that _I_ don't have to do it, I can do more things. At the end of the workday last week, I kicked off a project that I've wanted to do for the last 5 years but could never justify writing it. The LLM crunched for 36 hours, I checked in on it this morning and it's ready for me to deploy next week when I get in the office. Something that would have taken me probably 9 months of focused effort. It would never have been worth 9 months of engineering time, but it sure is worth the 36 hours of background work while I was doing something else productive.

I guess it's not a quantum leap in the frontier of what _can_ be done, but it is a leap in what _will_ be done because the cost/benefit parameters change.

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#419

Post by someguynamedq »

bakugo wrote: post #204
codazoda wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is almost to say that the only part of the project that matters is the code. But the code is only a tiny part. I take joy in describing the thing and bringing that vision to life.

"That is almost to say that the only part of the meal that matters is the cooking. But the cooking is only a tiny part. I take joy in describing the food I want and bringing that vision to life."

What are you trying to say? There are a ton of people who care more about being able to make something they're imagining real than engaging in the process necessary to make it happen. This applies to food just as well as it does to software

Re: Fuck it, make it anyway

#420

Post by hanikesn »

RedCinnabar wrote: post #390
Palomides wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI has really revealed the programmers who were temporarily inconvenienced idea guys

I mean, wasn’t that the case for most of them? Im not a developer anymore, but to me programming was always a means to an end. Sure you can have preferences (static vs dynamic typing, functional vs OOP, etc.), but in the end they should only be relevant if they make you more productive, makes the codebase more readable and so on. Since these nuances are progressively getting less and less important, why would you car…

Because a lot of people enjoy the process. Why do you think people so wood working as hobby or the whole demo scene?
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