8 ms·

I just told my gardener to cut the grass and work on some flower installations. I'm so excited about gardening again. Can't wait to do some. Employing a garden

by samiv 8mo ago

I just told my gardener to cut the grass and work on some flower installations. I'm so excited about gardening again. Can't wait to do some. Employing a gardener to do my gardening for me is really making me enjoy gardening again!

moffkalast 8mo ago
Well it's more like employing a gardener makes me enjoy landscaping again. It's not like we ever found writing words on a keyboard all that great, it's fundamentally just about having an idea and turning it into something real.
- zeroonetwothree 8mo ago
  Speak for yourself. I have always loved the act of intentionally typing (converting my thoughts into structured text).
  - moffkalast 8mo ago
    I guess some people enjoy the process, but you can still do that. It's like with machinists and 3D printers, you can always spend 10 hours on the lathe to make something but most of the time it's more practical to just get the part so one can get on with what actually needs doing.
    - chasd00 8mo ago
      > It's like with machinists and 3D printers that's a good analogy, maybe change 3d printers to CNC. I think there's a group of people that derive joy and satisfaction from using the part they designed and there's another that gets satisfaction from producing the part as designed. Same for software, some people are thrilled because they can get the software they imagine while others dread not producing the software people imagine.
mixologic 8mo ago
*I'm so excited about landscape design. Can't wait to do more. Employing a gardener to do the gardening for me is really making me enjoy landscape design again!
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
mosburger 8mo ago
this is a great analogy despite it possibly coming off as snark. I think it's hard for some people to grasp that programmers are motivated by different things. Some are motivated by shipping products to users, others are motivated to make code that's a giant elegant cathedral, still others love glorious hacks to bend the machine into doing things it was never really intended to do. And I'm sure I'm missing a few other categories. I think the "AI ain't so bad" crowd are the ones who get the most satisfaction out of shipping product to users as quickly as possible, and that's totally fine. But I really wish they'd allow those of us who don't fall into that category to grieve just a little bit. This future isn't what I signed up for. It's one thing to design a garden and admire the results, but some people get into their "zen happy place" by pulling up weeds.
- newswasboring 8mo ago
  Having opencode doesn't preclude me from making elegant code. It just takes away the carpel tunnel.
  - grayhatter 8mo ago
    > I created this with some kind of genai To me, it just feels like plagiarism. Can you explain why it doesn't feel like plagiarism to you?
    - quietsegfault 8mo ago
      Plagiarism is claiming someone else’s specific work as your own. Using a generative tool is closer to using a compiler, an IDE, or a library. I’m not copying a person’s code or submitting someone else’s project with the name filed off. I’m directing a system, reviewing the output, editing it, and taking responsibility for the result. If I paste in a blog post verbatim and pretend I wrote it, that’s plagiarism. If I use a tool to generate a starting point and shape it into what I need, that’s just a different kind of authorship.
      - grayhatter 8mo ago
CamperBob2 8mo ago
As mosburger says, this is a great analogy. Do you think that the great artists paint, sculpt, and draw everything by hand, by themselves? Of course not... they never did, and they don't today. You're being offered the ability to join their ranks. It's your studio now. You have a staff of apprentices standing by, eager for instructions and commands. And you act like it's the worst thing that ever happened to you.
- draebek 8mo ago
  Is this sarcasm? I can't tell.
  - CamperBob2 8mo ago
    No, it's not. If you want things to stay the same forever, you shouldn't go into technology, art, or gardening. Try plumbing, masonry, or religion.
    - zeroonetwothree 8mo ago
      The truth is that you wouldn’t be saying that if the change had been in a direction you don’t like.
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
    - draebek 8mo ago
      I just actually thought that many of the great artists absolutely did paint, sculpt, or draw their creations "by hand", themselves. I suppose they used tools: the brush, chisel, pencil. Not sure how comparable those are to having an LLM write code for you.
      - CamperBob2 8mo ago
        The reality is that many if not most of the big names had apprentices who did a lot of the actual work. Art historians spend a lot of time arguing about whether a given Leonardo was really a product of Leonardo's hand, for example. This quick-and-dirty prompt returns results in line with my own understanding (which of course doesn't necessarily mean the exact figures are correct): https://chatgpt.com/share/698ce93b-b66c-800b-9e41-91ccab8ebae3 https://chatgpt.com/share/698ce93b-b66c-800b-9e41-91ccab8eba... The artist I was primarily thinking of when I wrote that comment was Chihuly, whose workshop is famously more like a factory than a studio.
acoard 8mo ago
I think this works unironically. My mother is an avid gardener and can spend 8 hours a day gardening. When her life circumstances allowed for it, she hired a once a week gardener to do the tasks she didn't like (or had difficulties doing as a small woman), and still gardens the same amount. I've teased her for hiring a gardener, but she swears it's a huge help and boost to her gardening quality of life.
dirkc 8mo ago
Oh, the joy that awaits you when you come back home to discover how the gardener interpreted "please trim the hedge by the gate a little".
small_model 8mo ago
The proper analogy would be you can now remove all weeds with the swipe of your hand and cut all your hedges with another swipe, you still are gardening you can do it quicker and therefore explore different possibilities.
- munificent 8mo ago
  For some, the feeling of pulling those weeds out is inseparable from the holistic experience they think of as "gardening".
  - small_model 8mo ago
    So using weedkiller isn't gardening to these people?
    - munificent 8mo ago
      My point is just that if there are 10 different activities that produce the same resulting object, they aren't necessarily the same activities in the minds of the participants solely because the output is the same. The process and experience matters too.
  - neom 8mo ago
    Maybe this isn't directly related to what you're saying and I'm not attacking it, I'm just thinking out loud: What would it mean to master gardening then? I've never gardened in my life but I grew up in Scotland around estate houses and castles, my friends dads were gardeners and each of them seems to be specialists in their own area, many working on the same estate, so what exactly is this "holistic experience of gardening"?
whattheheckheck 8mo ago
Imagine though instead of 1 garden you can make 10 or 30 gardens in the same time that are more extravagant than your 1 garden was. At any point in time you can dive back in 1 of them and start plucking away
- munificent 8mo ago
  What's so great about having 10 or 30 gardens?
  - tkfoss 8mo ago
    A lot of people go through the life never experiencing deep dedication and intimate relationship with something or someone. I noticed its often children who had less toys & space and learned to pay attention to every nook and crazy, letting their imagination fill the boredom, tend to appreciate things more deeply later in life.
- grayhatter 8mo ago
  Surely you have 10-30 examples you want to share? Or even just 1 or 2?
- recursive 8mo ago
  It's the making, not the having. If I'm selling these gardens, surely it's better to have more. If I enjoy the act of making the garden, then there's no reason I ever need to finish the first one. This analogy has probably outstayed its usefulness.
quietsegfault 8mo ago
I used to be big into amateur radio. When I was considering to build a tower, I would have paid someone to build the tower for me and do the climbing work to mount stuff on the tower. Your statement is nonsensical, because it assumes that there is a binary choice between "do everything yourself" and "delegate everything".
dave_sid 8mo ago
No you didn’t. You lead a team of gardeners to develop your grand vision. Or you directed an epic movie leading a cast of talented actors bringing your vision to life. You can choose an empowering analogy or a negative one it’s your choice.
- alexgarden 8mo ago
  Yeah... a team of gardeners who might, with no warning, decide to burn down your house to create some extra fertilizer for the rose garden. Sometimes I wonder...
  - dave_sid 8mo ago
    Think you need to work on your use of AI and not just copy paste 10000 lines and hope for the best.
jablongo 8mo ago
I'm so excited about landscape architecture now that I can tell my gardener to create an equivalent to the gardens at versailles for $5. Sometimes he plants the wrong kind of plant or makes a dead end path, but he fixes his work very quickly.
QuantumGood 8mo ago
By artificially narrowing a multi-faceted issue to just two either/or simplistic options you are no longer describing the issue. If you ackknowledge this, you can comment on it. But not acknowledging it makes your comment hard to parse. Sarcarsm? Overly simplistic? Missing context? Unclear.
theonething 8mo ago
How about hiring a gardener to do some of the stuff and you can focus doing the part of the gardening/landscaping that is important to you and you enjoy? I think that's a more accurate (and charitable) analogy than yours.
raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
If I were the architect of a large building that I designed from the blueprints, the interior, etc, I wouldn’t feel bad that I didn’t install the toilets myself. AI agents are the plumbers, the painters, the electricians, etc
jojva 8mo ago
Your comment is interesting because it shows how engineers view their work: through the product, i.e the why, or through the craft, i.e the how. What you consider "exciting", as a theoretical gardener, is the act of taking care of the plants. What OP finds it exciting is that they may now get a team of gardeners that'll build a Versailles-like garden for free.
flowerthoughts 8mo ago
Well, the gardener isn't going to cut down your roses to the ground as they are about to go into bloom because s/he mistook it for the weed they were just working on.
NeutralCrane 8mo ago
Are directors frauds because they aren’t the ones doing the acting? Is there no joy in being an architect because they aren’t the one assembling the building at the construction site? Is there no value in product engineering because they aren’t fabricating the products in the factory? It’s fine to find enjoyment in the actual programming part of software engineering. It’s stupid to assume that is the only aspect of software engineering that is valuable or that is enjoyable for others.

by samiv 8mo ago

moffkalast 8mo ago

Well it's more like employing a gardener makes me enjoy landscaping again. It's not like we ever found writing words on a keyboard all that great, it's fundamentally just about having an idea and turning it into something real.

zeroonetwothree 8mo ago
Speak for yourself. I have always loved the act of intentionally typing (converting my thoughts into structured text).
- moffkalast 8mo ago
  I guess some people enjoy the process, but you can still do that. It's like with machinists and 3D printers, you can always spend 10 hours on the lathe to make something but most of the time it's more practical to just get the part so one can get on with what actually needs doing.
  - chasd00 8mo ago
    > It's like with machinists and 3D printers that's a good analogy, maybe change 3d printers to CNC. I think there's a group of people that derive joy and satisfaction from using the part they designed and there's another that gets satisfaction from producing the part as designed. Same for software, some people are thrilled because they can get the software they imagine while others dread not producing the software people imagine.

mixologic 8mo ago

*I'm so excited about landscape design. Can't wait to do more. Employing a gardener to do the gardening for me is really making me enjoy landscape design again!

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

mosburger 8mo ago

this is a great analogy despite it possibly coming off as snark. I think it's hard for some people to grasp that programmers are motivated by different things. Some are motivated by shipping products to users, others are motivated to make code that's a giant elegant cathedral, still others love glorious hacks to bend the machine into doing things it was never really intended to do. And I'm sure I'm missing a few other categories. I think the "AI ain't so bad" crowd are the ones who get the most satisfaction out of shipping product to users as quickly as possible, and that's totally fine. But I really wish they'd allow those of us who don't fall into that category to grieve just a little bit. This future isn't what I signed up for. It's one thing to design a garden and admire the results, but some people get into their "zen happy place" by pulling up weeds.

newswasboring 8mo ago
Having opencode doesn't preclude me from making elegant code. It just takes away the carpel tunnel.
- grayhatter 8mo ago
  > I created this with some kind of genai To me, it just feels like plagiarism. Can you explain why it doesn't feel like plagiarism to you?
  - quietsegfault 8mo ago
    Plagiarism is claiming someone else’s specific work as your own. Using a generative tool is closer to using a compiler, an IDE, or a library. I’m not copying a person’s code or submitting someone else’s project with the name filed off. I’m directing a system, reviewing the output, editing it, and taking responsibility for the result. If I paste in a blog post verbatim and pretend I wrote it, that’s plagiarism. If I use a tool to generate a starting point and shape it into what I need, that’s just a different kind of authorship.
    - grayhatter 8mo ago

CamperBob2 8mo ago

As mosburger says, this is a great analogy. Do you think that the great artists paint, sculpt, and draw everything by hand, by themselves? Of course not... they never did, and they don't today. You're being offered the ability to join their ranks. It's your studio now. You have a staff of apprentices standing by, eager for instructions and commands. And you act like it's the worst thing that ever happened to you.

draebek 8mo ago
Is this sarcasm? I can't tell.
- CamperBob2 8mo ago
  No, it's not. If you want things to stay the same forever, you shouldn't go into technology, art, or gardening. Try plumbing, masonry, or religion.
  - zeroonetwothree 8mo ago
    The truth is that you wouldn’t be saying that if the change had been in a direction you don’t like.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
  - draebek 8mo ago
    I just actually thought that many of the great artists absolutely did paint, sculpt, or draw their creations "by hand", themselves. I suppose they used tools: the brush, chisel, pencil. Not sure how comparable those are to having an LLM write code for you.
    - CamperBob2 8mo ago
      The reality is that many if not most of the big names had apprentices who did a lot of the actual work. Art historians spend a lot of time arguing about whether a given Leonardo was really a product of Leonardo's hand, for example. This quick-and-dirty prompt returns results in line with my own understanding (which of course doesn't necessarily mean the exact figures are correct): https://chatgpt.com/share/698ce93b-b66c-800b-9e41-91ccab8ebae3 https://chatgpt.com/share/698ce93b-b66c-800b-9e41-91ccab8eba... The artist I was primarily thinking of when I wrote that comment was Chihuly, whose workshop is famously more like a factory than a studio.

acoard 8mo ago

I think this works unironically. My mother is an avid gardener and can spend 8 hours a day gardening. When her life circumstances allowed for it, she hired a once a week gardener to do the tasks she didn't like (or had difficulties doing as a small woman), and still gardens the same amount. I've teased her for hiring a gardener, but she swears it's a huge help and boost to her gardening quality of life.

dirkc 8mo ago

Oh, the joy that awaits you when you come back home to discover how the gardener interpreted "please trim the hedge by the gate a little".

small_model 8mo ago

The proper analogy would be you can now remove all weeds with the swipe of your hand and cut all your hedges with another swipe, you still are gardening you can do it quicker and therefore explore different possibilities.

munificent 8mo ago
For some, the feeling of pulling those weeds out is inseparable from the holistic experience they think of as "gardening".
- small_model 8mo ago
  So using weedkiller isn't gardening to these people?
  - munificent 8mo ago
    My point is just that if there are 10 different activities that produce the same resulting object, they aren't necessarily the same activities in the minds of the participants solely because the output is the same. The process and experience matters too.
- neom 8mo ago
  Maybe this isn't directly related to what you're saying and I'm not attacking it, I'm just thinking out loud: What would it mean to master gardening then? I've never gardened in my life but I grew up in Scotland around estate houses and castles, my friends dads were gardeners and each of them seems to be specialists in their own area, many working on the same estate, so what exactly is this "holistic experience of gardening"?

whattheheckheck 8mo ago

Imagine though instead of 1 garden you can make 10 or 30 gardens in the same time that are more extravagant than your 1 garden was. At any point in time you can dive back in 1 of them and start plucking away

munificent 8mo ago
What's so great about having 10 or 30 gardens?
- tkfoss 8mo ago
  A lot of people go through the life never experiencing deep dedication and intimate relationship with something or someone. I noticed its often children who had less toys & space and learned to pay attention to every nook and crazy, letting their imagination fill the boredom, tend to appreciate things more deeply later in life.
grayhatter 8mo ago
Surely you have 10-30 examples you want to share? Or even just 1 or 2?
recursive 8mo ago
It's the making, not the having. If I'm selling these gardens, surely it's better to have more. If I enjoy the act of making the garden, then there's no reason I ever need to finish the first one. This analogy has probably outstayed its usefulness.

quietsegfault 8mo ago

I used to be big into amateur radio. When I was considering to build a tower, I would have paid someone to build the tower for me and do the climbing work to mount stuff on the tower. Your statement is nonsensical, because it assumes that there is a binary choice between "do everything yourself" and "delegate everything".

dave_sid 8mo ago

No you didn’t. You lead a team of gardeners to develop your grand vision. Or you directed an epic movie leading a cast of talented actors bringing your vision to life. You can choose an empowering analogy or a negative one it’s your choice.

alexgarden 8mo ago
Yeah... a team of gardeners who might, with no warning, decide to burn down your house to create some extra fertilizer for the rose garden. Sometimes I wonder...
- dave_sid 8mo ago
  Think you need to work on your use of AI and not just copy paste 10000 lines and hope for the best.

jablongo 8mo ago

I'm so excited about landscape architecture now that I can tell my gardener to create an equivalent to the gardens at versailles for $5. Sometimes he plants the wrong kind of plant or makes a dead end path, but he fixes his work very quickly.

QuantumGood 8mo ago

By artificially narrowing a multi-faceted issue to just two either/or simplistic options you are no longer describing the issue. If you ackknowledge this, you can comment on it. But not acknowledging it makes your comment hard to parse. Sarcarsm? Overly simplistic? Missing context? Unclear.

theonething 8mo ago

How about hiring a gardener to do some of the stuff and you can focus doing the part of the gardening/landscaping that is important to you and you enjoy? I think that's a more accurate (and charitable) analogy than yours.

raw_anon_1111 8mo ago

If I were the architect of a large building that I designed from the blueprints, the interior, etc, I wouldn’t feel bad that I didn’t install the toilets myself. AI agents are the plumbers, the painters, the electricians, etc

jojva 8mo ago

Your comment is interesting because it shows how engineers view their work: through the product, i.e the why, or through the craft, i.e the how. What you consider "exciting", as a theoretical gardener, is the act of taking care of the plants. What OP finds it exciting is that they may now get a team of gardeners that'll build a Versailles-like garden for free.

flowerthoughts 8mo ago

Well, the gardener isn't going to cut down your roses to the ground as they are about to go into bloom because s/he mistook it for the weed they were just working on.

NeutralCrane 8mo ago

Are directors frauds because they aren’t the ones doing the acting? Is there no joy in being an architect because they aren’t the one assembling the building at the construction site? Is there no value in product engineering because they aren’t fabricating the products in the factory? It’s fine to find enjoyment in the actual programming part of software engineering. It’s stupid to assume that is the only aspect of software engineering that is valuable or that is enjoyable for others.