4 ms·

This is artisans vs industry. You can get a hand-crafted, beautiful, solid, chair made by a guy who knows all the tricks of carpentry. He's spent his whole lif

This is artisans vs industry. You can get a hand-crafted, beautiful, solid, chair made by a guy who knows all the tricks of carpentry. He's spent his whole life perfecting the technique of how to drill the holes, how to fit everything together, how to balance the chair. It used to be the only way. Then someone invents a machine that can make you a hundred crappy chairs. Sometimes the legs don't fit in the seat, sometimes the chair isn't balanced. But it's close enough often enough. On top of it, the new tool is not in the lineage of the old tools. It doesn't FEEL like you are crafting a chair.

conqrr 9mo ago
Except that chairs (or anything that's automated today, even cars) don't rapidly evolve or are dynamic like Software is.
- weiliddat 9mo ago
  Not the OP, but I’ve been thinking about why LLMs feel different and I think it’s closer to the chair analogy than I initially thought. Not able to fully articulate it but here’s my try. Conventionally programming software needed you to know your tools like language, framework, OS, etc. pretty well. There’s a divergent set of solutions dependent on your needs and the craftsmen (programmers/engineers) you went to. Many variables you needed to know to produce something useful. You need to know your raw materials, like your wood. With LLMs it’s weirdly convergent. Now there’s so many ways to get the same thing because you just have to ask with language. It’s like mass produced furniture because it’s the most common patterns and solutions it’s been trained on. Like someone took all the wood in the world, ran it through some crazy processing, and now you are just the assembler of IKEA like pieces that mostly look the same. There’s a lost in necessity in craft. It helps to know the underlying craft, but it’s been industrialized and most people would be happy enough with that convergent solution.
AdieuToLogic 9mo ago
> This is artisans vs industry. ... But it's close enough often enough. If I had a nickle every time I heard the equivalent of "close enough often enough" on root-cause analysis bridge calls during prod outages...
deleted 9mo ago
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conqrr 9mo ago

Except that chairs (or anything that's automated today, even cars) don't rapidly evolve or are dynamic like Software is.

weiliddat 9mo ago
Not the OP, but I’ve been thinking about why LLMs feel different and I think it’s closer to the chair analogy than I initially thought. Not able to fully articulate it but here’s my try. Conventionally programming software needed you to know your tools like language, framework, OS, etc. pretty well. There’s a divergent set of solutions dependent on your needs and the craftsmen (programmers/engineers) you went to. Many variables you needed to know to produce something useful. You need to know your raw materials, like your wood. With LLMs it’s weirdly convergent. Now there’s so many ways to get the same thing because you just have to ask with language. It’s like mass produced furniture because it’s the most common patterns and solutions it’s been trained on. Like someone took all the wood in the world, ran it through some crazy processing, and now you are just the assembler of IKEA like pieces that mostly look the same. There’s a lost in necessity in craft. It helps to know the underlying craft, but it’s been industrialized and most people would be happy enough with that convergent solution.

AdieuToLogic 9mo ago

> This is artisans vs industry. ... But it's close enough often enough. If I had a nickle every time I heard the equivalent of "close enough often enough" on root-cause analysis bridge calls during prod outages...

deleted 9mo ago

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