Writing toy software is a joy
blog.jsbarretto.com
Writing toy software is a joy
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Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#2Ha, these "toys" are quite ambitious. Here are my joyful toys: https://akkartik.itch.io/carousel/devlog
Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#3Toy Software is a lot like working on your bike/car/boat/whatever.
Working on your bike is fun. Working on the bike you need to ride to work tomorrow is stressful.
I miss writing toy software. It’s fun. But inevitably I want to use said software and that’s where the trouble starts. You find all the bugs and none of the time to fix them.
Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#4Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44284291 (117 points | 8 days ago | 28 comments)
Seems like the link changed, and thus not caught by the dupe detector.
Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#5> In 2025, the beauty and craft of writing software is being eroded. AI is threatening to replace us (or, at least, the most joyful aspects of our craft) and software development is being increasingly commodified, measured, packaged, and industrialised. Software development needs more simple joy, and I’ve found that creating toy programs is a great way to remember why I started working with computers again.
Sad but true. I especially feel that comment about losing the most “joyful” part.
Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#6 GameBoy Advance game (difficulty = 3/10, time = 2 weeks)
Physics engine (difficulty = 5/10, time = 1 week)
Threaded Virtual Machine (difficulty = 6/10, time = 1 week)
POSIX shell (difficulty = 4/10, time = 3-5 days)
But regardless of the time estimates, I appreciate the idea!
Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#7Toy Software is a lot like working on your bike/car/boat/whatever. Working on your bike is fun. Working on the bike you need to ride to work tomorrow is stressful. I miss writing toy software. It’s fun. But inevitably I want to use said software and that’s where the trouble starts. You find all the bugs and none of the time to fix them.
I also have more "working software" interests than i have time and energy. Many of them have a ton of mundane boring details i've done a thousand times before. I'm actually a bit excited that i can work on what i want to work on.
With that said it's a challenge and a chore on its own to curate what "AI" writes. So it's definitely not all roses.
Disclaimer: I'm still early in the experimentation phase. We'll see if i hold these opinions in a few months.
Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#8GameBoy Advance game (difficulty = 3/10, time = 2 weeks) Wow! Physics engine (difficulty = 5/10, time = 1 week) What?? Threaded Virtual Machine (difficulty = 6/10, time = 1 week) I— POSIX shell (difficulty = 4/10, time = 3-5 days) Ok... I can't believe this person :D But regardless of the time estimates, I appreciate the idea!
I was going to make a similar comment. This list is fine, but the times are all over the place. If they removed those estimates it'd be a much better list. If a hash map takes 3-5 days for someone, they aren't making a threaded VM in 7 days.
Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#9This is quite an impressive list, and many of the things ranking low in difficulty for the author would have been quite high for me. It's definitely inspiring, makes me want to dust off a toy of my own.
That said, I feel the conclusion on learning with LLMs deserves some more nuance. It really depends on how you use them.
This is a terrible prompt for learning:
> Implement this solution for me
This is an AMAZING prompt for learning:
> Please give me an overview of ELF. Focus on the highest level abstractions, more of the 'why' than the 'how'
Certainly one can argue that it takes something away, in that you did not have to conduct the research yourself whenever a question occurred. However, if you are engaging in honest intellectual work (i.e. really thinking), then having a Socratic teacher always ready to discuss your questions is a profound accelerant to the learning process.
Re: Writing toy software is a joy
#10> In 2025, the beauty and craft of writing software is being eroded. AI is threatening to replace us (or, at least, the most joyful aspects of our craft) and software development is being increasingly commodified, measured, packaged, and industrialised. Software development needs more simple joy, and I’ve found that creating toy programs is a great way to remember why I started working with computers again. Sad but t…
I have more joy than ever working on toy software while using LLMs. My joy comes from building things, thinking architecture, components, creative solutions that create something new and exciting. Hand-setting lines of code is NOT what brings me joy personally, it's a means to an end. Dancing with agentic LLMs is so much fun to me. I can however understand that if the code part is what brings you joy, then we're probably not moving in a direction that pleases you. For those of us who like to build, first and foremost, it's heaven.