7 ms·

Brilliant! I hate it. The author will surely admit that there was "joy" in creating this suite of software, but it's a different kind of joy than most of us her

by aorth 5mo ago

Brilliant! I hate it. The author will surely admit that there was "joy" in creating this suite of software, but it's a different kind of joy than most of us here would recognize. I am looking forward to being a part of the group of detractors doing things the old way, similar to the "small web" or other counter cultures on the Internet. I fantasize about being here to pick up the pieces after all the others went full-on into AI-assisted everything and lost their critical thinking capacity, programming skills, knowledge of Unix command line, etc. There is part of me that understands the appeal of the all-in on AI and personalized software approach. It's a bit cyberpunk! In terms of open-source software, the downsides outweigh the benefits in my opinion, though. Important principles like community ownership and commitment are absent, and this approach is even radically antisocial. And then there's the inevitable issues with maintainability, to say noting about dependence on big tech companies. To each their own, but this is not for me.

dimator 5mo ago
I read somewhere (in the myriad blog posts dealing with this Cambrian LLM explosion) that software developers could be put into two camps: those that just want the thing to exist, and those that want to build and understand the thing (in addition to wanting it to exist). those in the first camp are having a great time. those in the second camp (which is how you're describing yourself, and how I'd describe myself) are wary and suspicious. it is somewhat paradoxical, we've watched/read sci-fi/cyberpunk for years and dreamed of this kind of world. after all, when did you see any members of the Enterprise writing code? they just asked the computer to "write a subroutine" and that was that. what a world! but here we are, with the craft in danger, not entirely impressed by the idea of "just ask and walk away". i, too, fear for my loss of critical thinking, raw skills, and design sense, as do i think about being one of the few (in 2, 3, 5, 10 years) that didn't abdicate their cognition, their craft, to the tech overlords. but i wonder if it will matter anyway. i wonder if "source code" will be a deep abstraction that nobody thinks about anyway, similar to how 99% of us don't care/need to care what the machine code we're eventually emitting does or looks like. in any case, i'll keep my thinking for now.
- theshrike79 5mo ago
  I kinda like the woodworking analogy of this. I, in theory, can plane a piece of wood with a hand planer. But I'll never do it again, we did it at school in ye olden times before the millennium and it was boring then as it is boring now. I know people who get satisfaction from it, they take one sliver off with the hand planer, feel the wood with their hand and figure out the perfect angle for the next tiny sliver of wood to come out off, repeating the process over and over again. I, personally, will just feed the damn plank to a mechanical planer with the exact specs of the resulting board set up. I just want the board smooth so I can get to the next step of the process. I'm not doubting the "wood-slop" the machine produces, I can see and measure if it's good enough or not. I don't need to be involved in the process. We're both making a table, mine will be done faster. It might not be hand-crafted to perfection, but it will hold the stuff I intend to put on it just fine. If I find out it sucks later on, I can make a new one that's slightly better or fix the existing one. My goal was a functional product, not a piece of handcrafted art.
  - dimator 5mo ago
    Your analogy is not really apples to apples though, is it? More close is: if there was a table making machine, you just push a button and something like a table comes out, would you still be a woodworker? You haven't planed, nor measured, nor cut, nor jointed, you've only pressed on "make me a table"
    - theshrike79 5mo ago
      And I wouldn't claim I was a woodworker. But I might be a "furniture designer", if I can adjust the parameters of what kind of table it plops out.
  - yuye 5mo ago
    I don't think the analogy works. You're focusing on the "how", not the "what". Using a mechanical planer, you still need to dial in numbers yourself. You design your own table, the more modern tools just make it easier to realize your vision. Another example: I enjoy writing with a good pen. But whether I write by pen or on a keyboard, it's still me writing it. However, AI does basically all the real work, only leaving you to guide it. Make a table? AI gives you one with 2 legs. More legs? Guess I can live with 5 legs. And you wouldn't be making that table, AI is. You cannot have pride in something that you never made yourself. It's the same as 3D-printing something from Thingiverse and claiming you made it. People who create AI blog posts are not writing. Those that prompt their way to a piece of software are not doing software engineering. The ones that generate AI images are not being artists.

by aorth 5mo ago

dimator 5mo ago

I read somewhere (in the myriad blog posts dealing with this Cambrian LLM explosion) that software developers could be put into two camps: those that just want the thing to exist, and those that want to build and understand the thing (in addition to wanting it to exist). those in the first camp are having a great time. those in the second camp (which is how you're describing yourself, and how I'd describe myself) are wary and suspicious. it is somewhat paradoxical, we've watched/read sci-fi/cyberpunk for years and dreamed of this kind of world. after all, when did you see any members of the Enterprise writing code? they just asked the computer to "write a subroutine" and that was that. what a world! but here we are, with the craft in danger, not entirely impressed by the idea of "just ask and walk away". i, too, fear for my loss of critical thinking, raw skills, and design sense, as do i think about being one of the few (in 2, 3, 5, 10 years) that didn't abdicate their cognition, their craft, to the tech overlords. but i wonder if it will matter anyway. i wonder if "source code" will be a deep abstraction that nobody thinks about anyway, similar to how 99% of us don't care/need to care what the machine code we're eventually emitting does or looks like. in any case, i'll keep my thinking for now.

theshrike79 5mo ago
I kinda like the woodworking analogy of this. I, in theory, can plane a piece of wood with a hand planer. But I'll never do it again, we did it at school in ye olden times before the millennium and it was boring then as it is boring now. I know people who get satisfaction from it, they take one sliver off with the hand planer, feel the wood with their hand and figure out the perfect angle for the next tiny sliver of wood to come out off, repeating the process over and over again. I, personally, will just feed the damn plank to a mechanical planer with the exact specs of the resulting board set up. I just want the board smooth so I can get to the next step of the process. I'm not doubting the "wood-slop" the machine produces, I can see and measure if it's good enough or not. I don't need to be involved in the process. We're both making a table, mine will be done faster. It might not be hand-crafted to perfection, but it will hold the stuff I intend to put on it just fine. If I find out it sucks later on, I can make a new one that's slightly better or fix the existing one. My goal was a functional product, not a piece of handcrafted art.
- dimator 5mo ago
  Your analogy is not really apples to apples though, is it? More close is: if there was a table making machine, you just push a button and something like a table comes out, would you still be a woodworker? You haven't planed, nor measured, nor cut, nor jointed, you've only pressed on "make me a table"
  - theshrike79 5mo ago
    And I wouldn't claim I was a woodworker. But I might be a "furniture designer", if I can adjust the parameters of what kind of table it plops out.
- yuye 5mo ago
  I don't think the analogy works. You're focusing on the "how", not the "what". Using a mechanical planer, you still need to dial in numbers yourself. You design your own table, the more modern tools just make it easier to realize your vision. Another example: I enjoy writing with a good pen. But whether I write by pen or on a keyboard, it's still me writing it. However, AI does basically all the real work, only leaving you to guide it. Make a table? AI gives you one with 2 legs. More legs? Guess I can live with 5 legs. And you wouldn't be making that table, AI is. You cannot have pride in something that you never made yourself. It's the same as 3D-printing something from Thingiverse and claiming you made it. People who create AI blog posts are not writing. Those that prompt their way to a piece of software are not doing software engineering. The ones that generate AI images are not being artists.