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This is the wrong way to think about tool use. You wanted this feature for years. You understood the problem, but the amount of time that it would have taken t

• ares623 7mo ago
  If I picked it up from someone else's garden without permission then yeah.
• tptacek 7mo ago
  We grew tomatoes last summer. Over the last 2 years, something about tomatoes (and BLTs in particular) really clicked for me; we'd grown tomatoes many previous summers, and I could give a shit, but last summer I cared a lot about our home-grown tomatoes. And I totally did feel less good about BLTs I made with supermarket heirloom tomatoes! It was irrational, but I did feel that way. I get where people are coming from.
  • bravura 7mo ago
    Hot take: We mostly eat garbage tomatoes. "*A BLT is a tomato sandwich, seasoned with bacon.* It wasn't until I tasted my first great tomato, at the vine-ripe old age of 22, that I finally understood the true nature of the BLT (and, by extension, why I'd never enjoyed tomatoes on my sandwiches or in my salads). Here we go: A BLT is not a well-dressed bacon sandwich. A BLT is a tomato sandwich, seasoned with bacon. From this basic premise, all else follows." https://www.seriouseats.com/ultimate-blt-sandwich-bacon-lettuce-tomato-recipe https://www.seriouseats.com/ultimate-blt-sandwich-bacon-lett...
    • tptacek 7mo ago
      I mean, I'm not much of a gardener, but Erin sure is, and I had a direct basis for comparison. Our tomatoes were better, but the supermarket heirlooms were perfectly cromulent. I think the key is just to make sure you're buying them in season, and that they didn't travel far.
      • rkagerer 7mo ago
        I won't lie, came here expecting to hate on AI, stayed for the awesome discussion on tomatoes.
        • bravura 7mo ago
          Believe me, I came here expecting to dunk on AI-haters, not talk tomato talk.
      • bravura 7mo ago
        Yes. I didn't know or understand why I felt meh about run-of-the-mill raw tomatoes this until the Kenji article. "Using mealy, off-season tomatoes is the primary unforgivable sin, but when it comes to BLT crimes, that's just the tip of the iceberg lettuce. ... Off-season tomatoes are grown in warmer climates, picked when underripe, then treated with ethylene gas (a gas that is naturally produced by plants to trigger ripening in fruits) to produce their red color before they hit supermarket shelves. The result is tomatoes that are as bland as they are ruby-red. Truly great tomatoes must be fully ripened on the vine, where they'll continue to develop flavor and sweetness. Look for plump tomatoes, with the heft and give of a water balloon. If you have a choice, look for substantial and meaty heirloom varieties with balanced sweetness and acidity, like Cherokee Purple or Brandywine. Avoid tomatoes that feel light for their size, which means they have more air pockets inside and are typically better for saucing or salads."
    • cozzyd 7mo ago
      yes, American tomatoes are generally terrible source, am Romanian.
  • dddgghhbbfblk 7mo ago
    It's not irrational at all! The act of doing something yourself brings inherent pleasure and satisfaction, whether that thing is "growing tomatoes" or "coding a feature". It makes us feel useful.
  • rickydroll 7mo ago
    try these varities Cherokee Purple. Black Krim Black from Tula. Brandywine heck, Almost any black tomato is a richer flavor than traditional hybrids. Heirloom tomatoes are also fantastic for flavors, but they are difficult to grow. Consistent watering, pruning lower leaves to keep disease away, proactive treatment of fungus and bacteria. It's a lot of work, but the results you get when it all comes together, yeah, it makes a fantastic tomato soup, sauce, Caprese salad. I'm starting seedlings this week. I'm probably going to have more tomato seedlings than I know what to do with. Of course, as problems go, I could have worse ones. The problem I'd like to have is growing too many mini watermelons. For some reason, I just can't get any yield, and the squirrels/mice gnaw on them as soon as they are vaguely ripe. My partner is not going to be happy when I rip up most of the lawn in the backyard. She'll probably buy me overalls and a straw hat.
    • tptacek 7mo ago
      We did Cherokee Purples (like everyone else), Buffalo Suns, and Indigo Roses. The Buffalo Suns were great, by the way.
• _vertigo 7mo ago
  The blog post discusses this point directly. Did you read it?
  • raincole 7mo ago
    What makes you think they didn't read it? The comment is a direct response to the blog post. They just think the post is wrong. Disagreement != Lack of understanding.
• ryandrake 7mo ago
  > When you eat a strawberry do you feel like an impostor for not growing it yourself? No, but if I asked an intern to eat it for me, I wouldn't feel like I did anything or experienced anything at all. That's what LLM coding feels like--like I'm not doing anything meaningful. It's like hiring someone to love my kid for me.
  • echelon 7mo ago
    > No, but if I asked an intern to eat it for me, I wouldn't feel like I did anything at all. That's a poor analogy. If I asked an intern to implement a function, I know I did the instruction and that I worked through them. The intern did work, but I did fancy high level work and killed several birds with one stone. Even better analogy: if I'm a film director, I'm working through a lot of people. The DP, the cast, the crew, the AD (though they're my boss, telling me what I can/can't budget for)... The best analogy for AI is the "film director" analogy. There are good directors and bad directors, good films and bad films. No director works alone (unless it's some kind of avant-garde film school project). You wouldn't say a film director isn't doing work. That they can't be uniquely felt through their work. That what they're doing isn't hard, doesn't require talent/taste, and doesn't get better over time. We're all basically becoming film directors.
    • tayo42 7mo ago
      Making movies is hard. Ai basically made the smaller personal sized things easy, but substantial projects are still out of reach. There isn't anything for an individual to feel good about.
    • ryandrake 7mo ago
      Directors do work, but a different kind of work. Not really what most people would consider hands-on filmmaking. They're more like managers--telling others what to do, how to light this, how to shoot that, where the characters should be. It's work but it's not "making." If I want to make a film, I'm going to grab a camera and point it at something. If I wanted to tell other people to make a film, I'd become a director. That's the major difference I feel between writing code and having an LLM do it. We're all being asked to become directors when we just want to make movies.
• jimbokun 7mo ago
  Have you tried just not feeling depressed?
• andyfilms1 7mo ago
  Except, calling it a "tool" is exactly why OP feels bad. Simply phrasing it another way, I.E. "OP paid for a service to implement a feature he wanted," would completely remove the guilt and be more technically accurate. IMO, the way we talk about using AI leads to a lot of confusion and needs to change.
• travisgriggs 7mo ago
  > When you eat a strawberry do you feel like an impostor for not growing it yourself? I don’t think this is the right question. What you posit is a consumption dilemma. It’s a valid question, but it focuses on what values we might arbitrarily ascribe to how we source what we consume. The OPs dilemma is more akin to giving a cutting board for Christmas that you bought vs handmade. Or some other. I think these cases of how we present what it appears we created is the dilemma OP is facing.
• senectus1 7mo ago
  i like the exosuit analogy.. if you cant lift something because its heavy, but have an exo suit that will let you lift it... does that make you feel like a fraud? AI is like that its a tool. you;re still responsible for the use of it and the output of it. you need to understand that if you use that exo suit to hurt someone or use it poorly and damage something/someone.. thats entirely on you. just like a knife in your hand is a tool to prep food or to attack someone. your actions with it are on you.
  • bluefirebrand 7mo ago
    No need to invent a fictional exosuit. We already have real machines that augment our physical abilities like cars and excavators and such Anyways, you ever seen the average excavator pilot? They're often very physically unhealthy I predict the average LLM pilot will be similarly mentally unhealthy
    • senectus1 7mo ago
      I suspect you're right
• oooyay 7mo ago
  I'd like to adjust your metaphor. As a woodworker who owns both hand tools and power tools, I don't feel bad when I spend most of a project cutting the repetitive pieces with a motorized saw. I also don't feel like a snob because I prefer certain hand saws under certain circumstances. To me, the metaphor is pretty solid for coding LLMs. A motorized saw, to anyone that's used them, takes away all the pain and complexity of using a hand saw for the same work, but it also introduces its own complexity and pain. There's also things that stay consistent: I still find myself transferring or measuring certain ways, I still have to brace the piece, I still need jigs (albeit different ones).