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

Our efforts, in part, define us

weakty.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 202 posts

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#51

Post by booleandilemma »

makerofthings wrote: post #19
andrewstuart wrote: post #13

I became a computer programmer because I want the computer to do things. I’m not a programmer because I wanted to program. Thus AI is incredibly exciting to me because it makes it easier to make computers do things.

I became a programmer because I like to write code. Having an llm write code for me is like building a robot that eats cake.

Beautifully put. I'm about as excited for LLMs as an artist would be for a robot that can paint. I know a lot of people out there can't imagine actually enjoying programming though.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#52

Post by lomase »

soco wrote: post #35
makerofthings wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became a programmer because I like to write code. Having an llm write code for me is like building a robot that eats cake.

I'm sure you can and will still be able write code. It's just you'll be getting paid less and less if you do it for a living.

Do you think a senior programmer will earn less money because the company now can have a junniors for 250$ a month?

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#53

Post by tolerance »

pettertb wrote: post #38
tolerance wrote: post #2

Was the pleasure of writing code that the author describes tied to the actual practice or its profits? My impression is that many white collar workers felt that their jobs and accompanying status were immutable. They’re not. Couldn’t they have seen this coming? Nothing prevents people from continuing on with their trades or interests how they did before the AI bubble bloomed. But if they want to earn a living doing i…

That is not how people work, especially if they want to do good work. You need to imbue your career with a little bit of your identity, a little bit of your soul. Coding, auto-repair, horse-rearing, plumbing, accountancy, what have you. You do well to limit this somewhat. But it is inevitable, if you want to achieve anything. You are going to end up smelling somewhat like your work clothes, no matter your industry, n…

I reckon that shame was once an effective method of communal correction and accountability. But it wasn’t my intent to affect it.

So no, I agree, don’t shame people for being hurt by the whims of business. But I would say, encourage the newcomers to this experience (who I suspect are exceptional in their sociopolitical status compared to their predecessors) to re-envision themselves and the ways that they render their service beyond prior cushiony contexts.

Businesses may not need you, you may make much less than before. But society sorely does need you in some capacity and the unfortunate case is that, to be frank, not too many people are going to be quick to boo-hoo with you over your loss because they’ve gone through something like it before already. Them or a loved one.

This is an American phenomenon. Join and be of aid to your countrymen. But don’t get SaaSy.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#54

Post by bonoboTP »

pettertb wrote: post #38
tolerance wrote: post #2

Was the pleasure of writing code that the author describes tied to the actual practice or its profits? My impression is that many white collar workers felt that their jobs and accompanying status were immutable. They’re not. Couldn’t they have seen this coming? Nothing prevents people from continuing on with their trades or interests how they did before the AI bubble bloomed. But if they want to earn a living doing i…

That is not how people work, especially if they want to do good work. You need to imbue your career with a little bit of your identity, a little bit of your soul. Coding, auto-repair, horse-rearing, plumbing, accountancy, what have you. You do well to limit this somewhat. But it is inevitable, if you want to achieve anything. You are going to end up smelling somewhat like your work clothes, no matter your industry, n…

Online people have this redditism that it's some American weirdness that people "live to work", while in Europe people "work to live" and stretch this too far. People (especially men) throughout the ages and regions have seen their work as a critical component of their identity, whether it be a craft or farming. The honor in completing the day's work, being valued for having a skill, honing that skill over the years, etc. It's not by itself a symptom of a workaholic. This can leave space for family and friends and neighbors too. But the idea that your job is supposed to be purely superficial is way overblown. It's a symptom of the generic alienated work that is full of useless meetings and business-buzzword-bingo-lingo and you can't coherently formulate in words to an outsider what even that job is, or how it concretely contributes to the betterment of the community/world/people (aka bullshit job).

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#55

Post by skydhash »

shubhamjain wrote: post #14

> For myself, in the last 10 years, my work of writing code has largely defined what I do with my working time. Now I experience large swaths of that work being created and done by AI (sometimes amazingly well, sometimes poorly), and I find myself thinking of the photographer above. Which is ironic, because smartphone photography is astonishingly average to someone who actually understands photography. Phones try to…

> AI coding will smooth out complexity for the majority of programmers, but at the same time, we’ll also see a lot of programmers building things that don’t actually need to be built, or not realizing the limits of their solutions, or just hung in the narrow space of what AI can do for them.

The computers is a very dumb machine. It does exactly what you tell it to do and nothing else. Complexity in programming stems from the need to formalize things and specifying every single detail of the algorithms.

Using AI can give you patterns for the most common things, but everything common is likely to be soon a library or a framework. So what you're instead doing is reinvent the wheel, but differently and the result is likely broken. Good enough for short runs (scripts), but anywhere you want something to last, then the cracks will start to appear.

The things with photography is that it's a spectrum. But software is discrete. It either works or it doesn't.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#56

Post by codr7 »

andai wrote: post #32
makerofthings wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became a programmer because I like to write code. Having an llm write code for me is like building a robot that eats cake.

For me it is both. I love certain kinds of programming, and don't enjoy other kinds. I'm naturally very good at some kinds, and not good at other kinds, despite putting in enormous effort. I guess ideally I'd get a job that is perfectly aligned with this profile (a work in progress!), but AI allows me to deal with the reality I have now in a much more pleasant and productive way.

Careful with the productivity claims, there's plenty of research showing that perspective is usually a distortion of some kind. Which makes sense, you have someone at your shoulder constantly reassuring you and bubbling ideas; I can see how it feels productive. Many report feeling more stressed, because the spaces where they used to think are no longer there.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#57

Post by nuancebydefault »

foamdino wrote: post #8

I can relate to this thought process and had my own conflicted thoughts about AI and the role it (and I) play in the SWE future: https://medium.com/@kev.jackson/two-months-of-an-ai-partners... - I'm still conflicted

Your Medium piece is a nice read!

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#58

Post by mallowdram »

tolerance wrote: post #43
bonoboTP wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure we are built for this on a societal scale. I understand the reasoning rationally. Sure, nobody pitied the horseshoe-maker blacksmith who was proud of his craft when the car was invented. Or the tailors when clothing became cheaply mass-produced. Or even the miners after many mines closed. Yeah I get it. "You learned a craft and it's no longer needed. Sucks to suck. Try to be useful in some other way or g…

The loss of self that comes with being effectively severed from society through labor exclusion is…a radical process. I read in a book titled The Technology Trap about how in the past, rulers withheld technological advancements and gave strategic deference to the people whose labor would be most affected by them, so as it not put their own necks at risk. That doesn’t seem to be a concern today.

The AI debacle is unusual as it's alive in disinformation at a scale that penetrates every status class.

Of course AI is a failure of imagination. But so were symbols, which cannot reference, they can only represent, if at all.

The real function of AI appears to be the transition away from symbols, metaphors, folk science cause and effect ideation.

We're only barely sensing this, but if you listen to Gary Marcus, Rich Sutton and those willing to see the larger scales, they are bellwethers that are actually sinking their own approaches as well as LLMs.

In effect, labor is about to reap the benefits of the AI debacle. I see this in the AI at the major teaching hospital my sister is a department head of. In lead developers in gaming, in media. AI does not function well, it's essentially wax fruit, it's not even mimicry. That's going to lead to an analog rebirth.

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#59

Post by caerwy »

Following Karl Popper's thinking on this topic, I'd say that our problems define us, and when we solve our problems we often discover new and interesting children problems demanding attention. “The best thing that can happen to a human being us to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.” — Karl Popper

Re: Our efforts, in part, define us

#60

Post by eloisius »

heliographe wrote: post #49
eloisius wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool apps btw. The trichromy one is a lot of fun. Cool that you’re earning money making this.

Cheers! Got an update coming out soon for that one, it's actually the one that makes the least money haha. I think it's way too nerdy and weird to ever hope to reach a broad audience even amongst photographers, unlike the others that are more approachable. But I still use it on a weekly basis myself so I just can't stop refining it. I've been obsessed with the trichromatic process for 10+ years, ever since I discover…

I also love Gorsky’s pictures! When I first saw his picture of the power turbines in Budapest I thought I must be looking at some ML-colorized daguerreotype, but nope it’s in true color.

I see you’re in Tokyo. If you ever end up in Taipei or if I’m in Tokyo I’d love to talk photography over coffee.

Post reply on HN