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I don't care how well your "AI" works

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Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#531

Post by yoyohello13 »

0xFEE1DEAD wrote: post #155

I honestly don't get vibe coding. I've tried it multiple times, but even after spending 4 hours on a fresh project I don't feel like I know what the hell is going on anymore. At that point I'm just guessing what the next prompt is to make it work. I have no critical knowledge about the codebase that makes me feel like I could fix an edge case without reading the source code line by line (which at that point would pro…

> I have no critical knowledge about the codebase

This is the default state for a lot of programmers, so vibe coding doesn't feel any different.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#532

Post by 0xEF »

senordevnyc wrote: post #406
0xEF wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once in your camp, thinking there was some sort of middle-ground to be had with the emergence of Generative AI and it's potential as a useful tool to help me do more work in less time, but I suppose the folks who opposed automated industrial machinery back in the day did the same. The problem is that, historically speaking, you have two choices; 1. Resist as long as you can, risking being labeled a Luddite or w…

Maybe the dilemma isn’t whether to “resist” or “acquiesce”, but rather whether to frame technological change as an inherently adversarial and zero sum struggle, versus looking for opportunities to leverage those technologies for greater productivity, comfort, prosperity, etc. Stop pushing against the idea of change. It’s going to happen, and keep happening, forever. Work with it. And by any metric, the average citize…

Your profile: Former staff software engineer at big tech co, now focused on my SaaS app, which is solo, bootstrapped, and profitable.

Yep. Makes sense.

> And by any metric

Can you cite one? Just curious. I enjoy when people challenge the idea that the advancement of tech doesn't always result in a better world for all because I grew up in Detroit, where a bunch of car companies decided that automation was better than paying people, moved out and left the city a hollowed out version of itself. Manufacturing has returned, more or less, but now Worker X is responsible for producing Nx10 Widgets in the same amount of time Worker Y had to produce 75 years ago, but still gets paid a barely livable wage because the unchecked force of greed has made it so whatever meager amount of money Worker X makes is siphoned right back out of their hands as soon as the check clears. So, from where I'm standing, your version of "improvement" is a scam, something sold to us with marketing woo and snake oil labels, promising improvement if we just buy in.

The thing is, I don't hate making money. I also don't hate change. Quite the opposite, as I generally encourage it, especially when it means we grow as humans...but that's generally not the focus of what you call "change," is it? Be honest with yourself.

What I hate is the argument that the only way to make it happen is by exploiting people. I have a deep love technology and repair it in my spare time for people to help keep things like computers or dishwashers out of landfills, saving people from having to buy new things in a world that treats technology as increasingly disposable, as though the resources used to create are unlimited. I know quite a bit about what makes it tick, as a result, and I can tell you first hand that there's no reason to have a microphone on a refrigerator, or a mobile app for an oven. But you and people like you will call that change, selling it as somehow making things more convenient while our data is collected, sorted and we spend our days fending of spam phone calls or contemplating if what we said today is tomorrow's thought crime. Heck, I'm old enough to remember when phone line tapping was a big deal that everyone was paranoid about, and three decades later we were convinced to buy listening devices that could track our movements. None of this was necessary for the advancement of humanity, just the engorgement of profits.

So what good came of it all? That you and I can argue on the Internet?

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#533

Post by Glemkloksdjf »

octorian wrote: post #428
anubistheta wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think this is what happens when a persons transitions from a progressive mindset to a conservative one, but has made being "progressive" a central tenant of their identity. Progressiveness is forward looking and a proponent of rapid change. So it is natural that LLM's are popular amongst that crowd. Also, progressivism should be accepting of and encouraging the evolution of concepts and social constructs.…

Just seeing that sentence fragment about "structures of power and violence" told me so much about the author. Its the sort of language that brings with it a whole host of stereotypes, some of which were immediately confirmed with a little more digging (and others would require way too much effort to confirm, but likely could be). And yes, this whole "capitalism bad" mentality I see in tech does kinda irk me. Why? Bec…

Capitalism is bad.

I'm not ignorant to this fact that it helped us for quite a long time but it also created climate change. Overpopulation.

We are still stuck on planet earth, have not figured out the reason for live or the origin of the universe.

I would prefer a world were we think about using all the resources earth provides sustainable and how to use them the most efficient way for the max amount of human beings. The rest of it we would use to advance society.

I would like to have Post-Scarcity Scientific Humanism

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#534

Post by jrm4 »

poszlem wrote: post #258
easterncalculus wrote: post #244

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles. That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. I don't like AI, generally. I am skeptical of corporate influence, I doubt AI 2027 and so-called 'AGI'. I'm certain we'll be "five years away"…

> That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. People who haven't lived through the transition will likely come here to tell you how wrong you are, but you are 100% correct.

No. You're both about 50% correct; what's making everything weird is that the things associated with "hacking" transitioned from "completely optional side hobby" to "fundamental basis of the economy, both bullshit and not."

This is why I'm finding most of this discussion very odd.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#535

Post by aforwardslash »

acuozzo wrote: post #231
aforwardslash wrote: post #4

Everytime I read one of these "I don't use AI" posts, the content is either "my code is handcrafted in a mountain spring and blessed by the universe itself, so no AI can match it", or "everything different from what I do is technofascism or ". Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been; and sometimes code is just code, and AI is just a tool. What am I missing?

? Maybe Im missing something, but tech is controlled by a handful of companies - always have been I guess it depends on what you define as "tech", but the '80s, '90s, and early '00s had an explosion of tiny hardware and software startups. Some even threatened Intel with x86 clones. It wasn't until the late '90s that NVIDIA was the clear GPU winner, for instance. It had serious competition from 3DFX, ATI, and a bunch…

> but the '80s, '90s, and early '00s had an explosion of tiny hardware and software startups

Most of them used intel, motorola or zilog tech at some capacity. Most of them with a clock used dallas semiconductor tech; Many of them with serial ports also used either intel or maxim/analog devices chips.

Many of those implementations are patented, and their inner designs were generically, "trade secrets". Most of the clones and rebrands were actually licensed (most of 80x51 microcontrollers and z80 chips are licensed tech, not original). As a tinkerer, you'd receive a black box (sometimes literally) with a series of pins and a datasheet.

If anything, i'd say you have much more choice today than in the 80s/90's.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#536

Post by zemo »

easterncalculus wrote: post #244

> I find it particularly disillusioning to realize how deep the LLM brainworm is able to eat itself even into progressive hacker circles. That's the thing, hacker circles didn't always have this 'progressive' luddite mentality. This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. I don't like AI, generally. I am skeptical of corporate influence, I doubt AI 2027 and so-called 'AGI'. I'm certain we'll be "five years away"…

> This is the culture that replaced hacker culture.

Breathless hustlecore tech industry culture is a place where finance bros have turned programmers into dogs that brag to one another about what a good dog they are. We should reject at every turn the idea that such a culture represents the totality of programming. Programming is so much more than that.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#537

Post by jrm4 »

acedTrex wrote: post #334
embedding-shape wrote: post #20

> And yeah, I get it. We programmers are currently living through the devaluation of our craft, in a way and rate we never anticipated possible. I'm a programmer, been coding professionally for 10 something years, and coding for myself longer than that. What are they talking about? What is this "devaluation"? I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun),…

I consider the devaluation of the craft to be completely independent from the professional occupation of software. Programming has been devalued because more people can do it at a basic level with LLM tooling. People that I do not consider smart enough or to have put enough work in to output the things that they have nor do they really understand it themselves. It is of course the new reality and now we all have to g…

Excellent take; this is like saying "being an amazing chef is devalued because McDonalds exists."

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#539

Post by robot-wrangler »

fragmede wrote: post #517
robot-wrangler wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realized recently that if you want to talk about interesting topics with smart people, if you expect things like critical thinking and nuanced discussion, you're currently much better off talking literature or philosophy than anything related to tech. I mean, everyone knows that discussing politics/economics is rather hopelessly polarized, everyone has their grievances or their superstitions or injuries that they c…

> Math that's not maybe related to ML is something HN is guaranteed to shit on. Eh, I mean here's one about the Ulam spiral that did pretty well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2047857 The fast inverse sqrt that John carmack did not. write also does well. I know there's many more. Are you sure that's not just a caricature of Hacker News you've built up in your head?

Visualizations and code always help. But to name two recent disappointments, stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46049932 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45957911 comes to mind as not meeting a high standard. To be clear, no expertise is fine, but no curiosity is bad.

Re: I don't care how well your "AI" works

#540

Post by jimbokun »

ineedasername wrote: post #520
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the culture that replaced hacker culture. Somewhere along the lines of "everybody can code," we threw out the values and aesthetics that attracted people in the first place. What began as a rejection of externally imposed values devolved into a mouthpiece of the current powers and principalities. This is evidenced by the new set of hacker values being almost purely performative when compared against the old…

"There is a way out: we need to create a culture that values craftmanship and dignifies work done by developers. We need to talk seriously and plainly about the spiritual and existential damage done by LLMs" This is the exact sentiment when said about some other profession or craft, countless people elsewhere and on HN have noted that it's neither productive not wise to be so precious about a task that evolved as a n…

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