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You touched on the significant thing that separates most of the AI code discourse in the two extremes: some people just don't like programming and see it as a s

You touched on the significant thing that separates most of the AI code discourse in the two extremes: some people just don't like programming and see it as a simple means to an end, while others love the process of actually crafting code. Similar to the differences between an art collector and a painter. One wants the ends, the other desires the means.

morkalork 1y ago
I think I could be happy switching between the two modes. There's tasks that are completely repetative slop that I've fully offloaded to AI with great satisfaction. There's others I enjoy that I prefer to use AI for consultation only. Regardless, few people liked doing code review before with their peers and somehow we've increased one of the least fun parts of the job.
timr 1y ago
That's not fair, and not what I am saying at all. I enjoy writing code. I just don't enjoy writing code that I've written a thousand times before. It's like saying that Picasso should have enjoyed painting houses for a living. They're both painting, right? (to be painfully clear, I'm not comparing myself to Picasso; I'm extending on your metaphor.)
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  You would rather debug the low quality LLM code that you know you could write better, a thousand times?
  - timr 1y ago
    Well, I don't write bugs in my code, of course, but let's just say that you were the type of person who does: having a bot that writes code 100x faster than you, that also occasionally makes mistakes (but can also fix them!), is still a huge win.
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > occasionally makes mistakes Well. Maybe we have to agree to disagree but I think it makes mistakes far more frequently than I do Even if it makes mistakes exactly as often as I do, making 100x as many mistakes in the same amount as time seems like it would be absolutely impossible to keep up with
d0100 1y ago
I love programming, I just don't like CRUDing, or API'ing... I also love programming behaviours and interactions, just not creating endless C# classes and looking at how to implement 3D math After a long day at the CRUD factory, being able to vibe code as a hobby is fun. Not super productive, but it's better than the alternative (scrolling reels or playing games)
tptacek 1y ago
I love coding, do it for fun outside of my job, and find coding with an LLM very enjoyable.
- icedchai 1y ago
  I've been experimenting with LLM coding for the past few months on some personal projects. I find it makes coding those projects more enjoyable since it eliminates much of the tedium that was causing me to delay the project in the first place.
  - timr 1y ago
    Exactly the same for me...now whenever I hit something like "oh god, I want to change the purpose of this function/variable, but I need to go through 500 files, and see where it's used, then make local changes, then re-test everything...", I can just tell the bot to do it. I know a lot of folks would say that's what search & replace is for, but it's far easier to ask the bot to do it, and then check the work.
    - cesarb 1y ago
      > "oh god, I want to change the name of this function/variable, but I need to go through 500 files, and see where it's used, then make local changes, then re-test everything..." Forgive me for being dense, but isn't it just clicking the "rename" button on your IDE, and letting it propagate the change to all definitions and uses? This already existed and worked fine well before LLMs were invented.
      - tptacek 1y ago
        Yes, that particular example modern editors do just fine. Now imagine having that for almost any rote transformation you wanted regardless of complexity (so long as the change was rote and describable).
      - timr 1y ago
        Yeah, sorry...I re-read the comment and realized I wasn't being clear. It's bigger than just search/replace. Already updated what I wrote. The far more common situation is that I'm refactoring something, and I realize that I want to make some change to the semantics or signature of a method (say, the return value), and now I can't just use search w/o also validating the context of every change. That's annoying, and today's bots do a great job of just handling it. Another one, I just did a second ago: "I think this method X is now redundant, but there's a minor difference between it, and method Y. Can I remove it?" Bot went out, did the obvious scan for all references to X, but then evaluated each call context to see if I could use Y instead. (But even in the case of search & replace, I've had my butt saved a few times by agent when it caught something I wasn't considering....)
nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
> You touched on the significant thing that separates most of the AI code discourse in the two extremes: some people just don't like programming and see it as a simple means to an end, while others love the process of actually crafting code. Yeah this is for sure true, but it's probably true in degrees. I think there was even a study or something (from GitHub maybe) about the frequency of languages and how there were far more commits in say Rust on weekends than weekdays (don't quote me on this). Plenty of people like programming but really don't find yet-another-enterprise-CRUD-with-React-front-end thing to be thrilling, so they will LLM-pasta it to completion but otherwise would have fun hacking away in langs/stuff they like. I identify with that (hypothetical) crowd.

morkalork 1y ago

I think I could be happy switching between the two modes. There's tasks that are completely repetative slop that I've fully offloaded to AI with great satisfaction. There's others I enjoy that I prefer to use AI for consultation only. Regardless, few people liked doing code review before with their peers and somehow we've increased one of the least fun parts of the job.

timr 1y ago

That's not fair, and not what I am saying at all. I enjoy writing code. I just don't enjoy writing code that I've written a thousand times before. It's like saying that Picasso should have enjoyed painting houses for a living. They're both painting, right? (to be painfully clear, I'm not comparing myself to Picasso; I'm extending on your metaphor.)

bluefirebrand 1y ago
You would rather debug the low quality LLM code that you know you could write better, a thousand times?
- timr 1y ago
  Well, I don't write bugs in my code, of course, but let's just say that you were the type of person who does: having a bot that writes code 100x faster than you, that also occasionally makes mistakes (but can also fix them!), is still a huge win.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > occasionally makes mistakes Well. Maybe we have to agree to disagree but I think it makes mistakes far more frequently than I do Even if it makes mistakes exactly as often as I do, making 100x as many mistakes in the same amount as time seems like it would be absolutely impossible to keep up with

d0100 1y ago

I love programming, I just don't like CRUDing, or API'ing... I also love programming behaviours and interactions, just not creating endless C# classes and looking at how to implement 3D math After a long day at the CRUD factory, being able to vibe code as a hobby is fun. Not super productive, but it's better than the alternative (scrolling reels or playing games)

tptacek 1y ago

I love coding, do it for fun outside of my job, and find coding with an LLM very enjoyable.

icedchai 1y ago
I've been experimenting with LLM coding for the past few months on some personal projects. I find it makes coding those projects more enjoyable since it eliminates much of the tedium that was causing me to delay the project in the first place.
- timr 1y ago
  Exactly the same for me...now whenever I hit something like "oh god, I want to change the purpose of this function/variable, but I need to go through 500 files, and see where it's used, then make local changes, then re-test everything...", I can just tell the bot to do it. I know a lot of folks would say that's what search & replace is for, but it's far easier to ask the bot to do it, and then check the work.
  - cesarb 1y ago
    > "oh god, I want to change the name of this function/variable, but I need to go through 500 files, and see where it's used, then make local changes, then re-test everything..." Forgive me for being dense, but isn't it just clicking the "rename" button on your IDE, and letting it propagate the change to all definitions and uses? This already existed and worked fine well before LLMs were invented.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      Yes, that particular example modern editors do just fine. Now imagine having that for almost any rote transformation you wanted regardless of complexity (so long as the change was rote and describable).
    - timr 1y ago
      Yeah, sorry...I re-read the comment and realized I wasn't being clear. It's bigger than just search/replace. Already updated what I wrote. The far more common situation is that I'm refactoring something, and I realize that I want to make some change to the semantics or signature of a method (say, the return value), and now I can't just use search w/o also validating the context of every change. That's annoying, and today's bots do a great job of just handling it. Another one, I just did a second ago: "I think this method X is now redundant, but there's a minor difference between it, and method Y. Can I remove it?" Bot went out, did the obvious scan for all references to X, but then evaluated each call context to see if I could use Y instead. (But even in the case of search & replace, I've had my butt saved a few times by agent when it caught something I wasn't considering....)

nyarlathotep_ 1y ago

> You touched on the significant thing that separates most of the AI code discourse in the two extremes: some people just don't like programming and see it as a simple means to an end, while others love the process of actually crafting code. Yeah this is for sure true, but it's probably true in degrees. I think there was even a study or something (from GitHub maybe) about the frequency of languages and how there were far more commits in say Rust on weekends than weekdays (don't quote me on this). Plenty of people like programming but really don't find yet-another-enterprise-CRUD-with-React-front-end thing to be thrilling, so they will LLM-pasta it to completion but otherwise would have fun hacking away in langs/stuff they like. I identify with that (hypothetical) crowd.