6 ms·

Really? I'm more motivated than ever to make stuff at the moment. I have a long list of projects I've always wanted to make, but I never had time. The barrier i

by josephg 5mo ago

Really? I'm more motivated than ever to make stuff at the moment. I have a long list of projects I've always wanted to make, but I never had time. The barrier is so low now. For example, I want to make: - A mini OS on top of SeL4 - A UI framework based on SolidJS, for native apps, in rust. - My own photo manager (which can do backups & sync across all my devices). And a gallery to share photos with friends - A local first data store, built on top of CRDTs - My own programming language And lots more. Each of these projects on their own would take months of time. If LLMs can speed up development, that's great! I don't care if nobody else uses what I make. I want a personal computer full of my own software.

lacedeconstruct 5mo ago
*Make anything "new"
- josephg 5mo ago
  Everything I want to make is new. I don't understand the objection. For example, the photo backup system I want to make will let me manage my ~400gb photo library. I want my library backed up on a couple devices, running linux and freebsd. I want my mac and iphone to have a local mirror of all the favorited photos, and when I'm at home, I want to be able to browse all photos from those devices by streaming them over the local network. I want native macos & ios app interfaces to view and manage all that. I don't know any existing software that meets my requirements. I don't think any such software exists. Apple, Dropbox and Google will solve this problem for me if I store all my photos in their cloud and pay them an ongoing subscription for the privilege. I'd much rather make something myself, and back up my photos on my own hard drives. Making something like this is simple enough, but very time consuming. If claude can take the drudgery out of it, well, I think that's just delightful.
  - uncognic 5mo ago
    Take a look at https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/
    - josephg 5mo ago
      Oh that looks lovely. I enjoy the UI and all the work on tagging and classification. But its still missing some features I want: - I want native desktop apps - I want P2P device sync. My laptop and my home server should be peers. Just with different rules for which photos are stored locally on each device. - I want per-device storage rules. (Eg, "I want all my favorited photos, and recent photos up to 50gb on my laptop"). - Backups. I want to be able to plug in an external hard drive and backup my photos (with some rules). Then disconnect the drive and see in the metadata for those photos that I have a copy of the full res RAW on that drive. But even if other programs exist, its still fun to make something myself. Authoring your own software gives you a different relationship with the computer. You're less of a consumer. You can change or tweak features on a whim. Psychologically, its kind of like being in your own home vs being in a hotel room. If you hate the furniture at home, you can move it or change it. You can decorate however you like. In a hotel, you're affected by your environment but you have no agency over it. I think its much more healthy to create.
      - rrvsh 5mo ago
        You're not wrong, but a fork of Immich would achieve much of the same, no? I understand this is probably a detour from the conversation, but I've been thinking of doing the same to add some niceties
        josephg 5mo ago
        If my goal was to make something that fits in with the existing ecosystem and has the most users possible, I could do that. Try to make some changes which could possibly be upstreamed. Spend my time going back and forth on minutia in github pull requests. Learn Dart. Figure out how to wrap a typescript & dart app in a macOS native window. Or turn to electron. (Yuck.) But I’m optimising for the feeling of joy and agency over my tools. I also want to experiment with p2p / local first data structures in a real app. I could fork immich and rewrite the data model. But that all seems much less fun. At the end of the day, I’m not doing this for other people. I’m doing this for me. Learning dart so I can hack on someone else’s code sounds like a pain in the butt. Not like something I’d want to do for fun on the weekend. Working on someone else’s code seems like a strange default. You and others have jumped on me for wanting to make my own thing instead of using - or forking - someone else’s software. Can you help me understand why? Why would that be the default for a fun hobby project? I’m confused.
  - righthand 5mo ago
    Ente photos is one thing and there are others. You can accomplish most of that by installing Syncthing. But the objection is that you’re not really building anything new even if you think it’s a new idea. By your definition you’re building for yourself and not sharing…so what good are your little projects. Reading your original list it just seems like you want to build and run software without having to do any research, even if a solution already exists.
    - argee 5mo ago
      I have everything this guy is talking about just from running Filerun (with the Nextcloud client for mirrors) and backing up to Backblaze R2. At some point developers seem to forget that other developers exist.
      - josephg 5mo ago
        > At some point developers seem to forget that other developers exist. At some point developers seem to forget that making stuff is fun. The fact SQLite and GCC exist doesn't mean you're banned from making a database or a C compiler. You're allowed to make stuff just because.
    - josephg 5mo ago
      > But the objection is that you’re not really building anything new even if you think it’s a new idea. By your definition you’re building for yourself and not sharing…so what good are your little projects. What an incredibly blinkered view. You think there's no value at all in making software unless your program solves a truly novel problem, and does so for millions of users? There's so much joy that can be found in simple, disposable acts of creativity. I don't need the world to applaud when I cook an omelette, make a table out of wood or play a piece on the piano. Why would I need that from the software I make? Just because you can buy a table from IKEA doesn't mean its not fun to make one yourself. Just because someone on spotify played it better doesn't mean there's no joy in playing music. Why would I hesitate to make my ideal photo library program, just because other programs exist? What a sad, self-limiting rule.
  - cryo32 5mo ago
    What's your time and life worth? You pay Apple to deal with it (which I do) and get to live a peaceful life and go out and take photos and have experiences. Or do you spend weeks implementing your own solution with Claude. The latter is considerably higher cost in time and money. AI is seen as a way out of drudgery but you're just trading one problem for another.
    - satvikpendem 5mo ago
      The implementation is part of the fun.
      - ori_b 5mo ago
        So why would you buy it off of Anthropic?
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        I don't understand the question. For one thing I use local models mainly, but even if I didn't, I'd be buying the tokens from cloud model providers, not the prepackaged, fully complete software itself. I buy the tokens to make what I want. It's actually quite similar to buying the services of a programmer off Upwork to build something for me, only with LLMs it's way cheaper and faster, with a shorter feedback loop.
        slopinthebag 5mo ago
        I think their point is that you aren't really doing the implementing, Claude (or any model really) is. If you genuinely find prompting LLMs to be fun, then by all means go for it.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        What I find fun is getting the output to exactly what I want. I don't care whether I'm personally implementing something or not, and that's what many in this thread seem not to understand.
cryo32 5mo ago
Leisure projects for me at least are about the personal challenge and achievement. If the LLM does it, you achieved nothing.
- r2_pilot 5mo ago
  I'm glad that you find achievement in the personal challenge. At home, I'm just getting things done. Small things, bigger things, and best of all I get to pet the dog more while it works in the background.
  - cryo32 5mo ago
    Yeah so don't bother. I don't write code at home. What's the point? I go on holiday once a month!
    - josephg 5mo ago
      So, you don't even work on personal projects? But you want to lecture everyone else about how to do them correctly (according to you)? What a waste of time.
      - cryo32 5mo ago
        I spent years working on personal projects. Back to 1988. Think I have a fair bit of experience.
- whstl 5mo ago
  Are you assuming that "using a LLM" automatically means "vibe coding"? Is it not engineering anymore even if you micromanage and relegate the machine to a better typist, following patterns and doing research around?
- josephg 5mo ago
  > If the LLM does it, you achieved nothing. Oh get off your high horse. You may as well say "If the compiler compiles your code, you achieved nothing". Its the same argument. I love meaty algorithmic challenges. And I enjoy the design challenge of making a piece of software. But I don't write CSS for fun. Debugging styling issues on mobile? I hate it. LLMs let me work on the parts that I find enjoyable and satisfying. Like UI design, or figuring out the data model. And then I can delegate the parts I don't like to Claude. It seems very happy to bang away at CSS. That's a great deal. If you want to personally write every line of code, good for you. But don't police my leisure projects.
throwaway13337 5mo ago
I feel the same way as you. But was unfortunately not surprised to see the replies you are getting here. There are a ton of opportunities available right now to make new things. And make them better, more customizable, and more sovereign. To the replies: be the change you want to see in the world, guys. That may be trite but focusing only on the negative will just make your own life shitty.
ori_b 5mo ago
And you're actually excited by the prospect of buying them from Anthropic instead of making them?
- satvikpendem 5mo ago
  Open weight models exist and are good enough to make the projects above.
  - ori_b 5mo ago
    And you're actually excited about these table scraps that companies couldn't even monetize, rather than making something?
    - satvikpendem 5mo ago
      Couldn't even monetize? DeepSeek and Alibaba with Qwen are doing quite well, no table scraps required. I am making things, I don't have to physically type letters on a keyboard to make things as long as the output of what I want exists.
    - rrvsh 5mo ago
      You are being needlessly combative. Please take a step back and look at what you are doing - I don't think this is positive for you or anybody
- josephg 5mo ago
  Suppose you're the senior engineer on a project. You design the UI of the software. Then design how you want the software to work internally. Then write the core data structures. And then guide a bunch of junior engineers to write the code, review their work. Is that the same as buying a computer program from anthropic? I have a friend who's an architect. Sometimes we're in the city and he says "Oh see that building? Its one of mine." He didn't lay the concrete, or do the wiring or anything. Should he not be proud, because a construction company built each floor? Does it not count? Does his contribution not matter?
sillyfluke 5mo ago
I support this take especially since you added the "I don't care if nobody else uses what I make", but you should at least acknowledge what you're talking about is pretty unrelated to the article, as the author's entire context seems to be making something for other people to use and building it together with other people. Since you said you want to make those things that you list, I assume none of these things have been built yet. If so, I would encourage you to consider how excited you will be to constantly maintain those things you build. But even if the maintainence cycle won't be as exciting, since you are the sole user you have the advantage of being able to proceed at a leisurely pace even while doing maintainence work. In a professional setting, the dopamine hit of being able to build something quickly that works in an area that you have little to no knowledge in makes you more dependent on the AI in the maintaince cycle as you want to chase that dopamine high by maintaining the same development speed. This in turn leads to a bigger burnout crash after that peak dopamine hit. Maintainence is a phase of diminishing returns even without AI, but when your coding agents are introducing new bugs at record pace with their bugfixes with no new features to write home about you are in a special place in Hell. I'm all for using AI to build ambitious projects. I have yet to see a person/company/organization continuously release huge software endeavours in a stable professional manner day in and day out with a coding agent harem in tow. If something like the Ladybird browser, or any browser that is "built by scratch", achieved Chrome parity in six months and consistently maintained the same level of stability with continuous releases then I would see that as proof that this approach has become professionaly sustainable. The reason people are getting away with so much using AI is because of the open secret in most enterprise engineering practices: the customer cares more about the response time for fixes they report than they do about overall or longterm product quality.
- josephg 5mo ago
  > I would encourage you to consider how excited you will be to constantly maintain those things you build. Why should I consider that? Its funny how the default with programming is that the piece of software exists forever. I've been learning to play the piano lately. The default with piano is that every piece is ephemeral. If I don't go out of my way to record something I play, after the notes have run out, the piece is gone forever. The same is true of cooking - except you can't record a meal at all. Once you eat it, its gone. Lots of art forms are like this - theatre. Dance. The circus. They're no less beautiful for being ephemeral. Why do we assume software has to be maintained indefinitely? Why even think about that right now? Maybe I'll work on these projects for awhile, maintain them as long as I want, and then in a few years someone will make something way better and I'll use that instead? Would that make the effort I put in pointless? I don't think so. I think it would make programming more like playing the piano. How lovely. > I'm all for using AI to build ambitious projects. I have yet to see a person/company/organization continuously release huge software endeavours in a stable professional manner day in and day out with a coding agent harem in tow. Yes, I've burned through enough claude tokens now that I find myself agreeing with you. I wouldn't use an LLM to make and maintain google chrome. But I wasn't planning on doing that anyway. There are also a lot more options than (1) write everything yourself and (2) vibe code the whole thing. LLMs are good at small-to-medium scope tasks right now. Fine. I'll use them - or not use them - with their limitations in mind.
slopinthebag 5mo ago
The issue is maintenance. If you want to use these projects for important things, you need to maintain them. If you don't want to maintain them, I can't see myself using them for anything important. I actually want less software for myself. Less things to maintain. I've become a "digital minimalist" in that I use very few software, only ones maintained by others who can afford and are willing to keep them working.
- josephg 5mo ago
  Some people find freedom in building their own house. Some people find freedom in living in a serviced apartment. Some people find joy in home cooked meals. To others, wealth is never needing to cook again. To each their own. As for maintenance, I think LLMs are actually very well suited for small maintenance tasks. The expensive part of programming is loading and unloading context into my head. "Oh dear, what is all this code doing? Oh no, coffeescript? And some ancient version of express JS? How does any of this work?". LLMs can bomb in, fix a compilation error and bomb out. "This program isn't compiling any more on macos X.Y.Z. Read the patch notes. Figure out why and fix the problem." Perfect.

by josephg 5mo ago

lacedeconstruct 5mo ago

*Make anything "new"

josephg 5mo ago
Everything I want to make is new. I don't understand the objection. For example, the photo backup system I want to make will let me manage my ~400gb photo library. I want my library backed up on a couple devices, running linux and freebsd. I want my mac and iphone to have a local mirror of all the favorited photos, and when I'm at home, I want to be able to browse all photos from those devices by streaming them over the local network. I want native macos & ios app interfaces to view and manage all that. I don't know any existing software that meets my requirements. I don't think any such software exists. Apple, Dropbox and Google will solve this problem for me if I store all my photos in their cloud and pay them an ongoing subscription for the privilege. I'd much rather make something myself, and back up my photos on my own hard drives. Making something like this is simple enough, but very time consuming. If claude can take the drudgery out of it, well, I think that's just delightful.
- uncognic 5mo ago
  Take a look at https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/
  - josephg 5mo ago
    Oh that looks lovely. I enjoy the UI and all the work on tagging and classification. But its still missing some features I want: - I want native desktop apps - I want P2P device sync. My laptop and my home server should be peers. Just with different rules for which photos are stored locally on each device. - I want per-device storage rules. (Eg, "I want all my favorited photos, and recent photos up to 50gb on my laptop"). - Backups. I want to be able to plug in an external hard drive and backup my photos (with some rules). Then disconnect the drive and see in the metadata for those photos that I have a copy of the full res RAW on that drive. But even if other programs exist, its still fun to make something myself. Authoring your own software gives you a different relationship with the computer. You're less of a consumer. You can change or tweak features on a whim. Psychologically, its kind of like being in your own home vs being in a hotel room. If you hate the furniture at home, you can move it or change it. You can decorate however you like. In a hotel, you're affected by your environment but you have no agency over it. I think its much more healthy to create.
    - rrvsh 5mo ago
      You're not wrong, but a fork of Immich would achieve much of the same, no? I understand this is probably a detour from the conversation, but I've been thinking of doing the same to add some niceties
      - josephg 5mo ago
        If my goal was to make something that fits in with the existing ecosystem and has the most users possible, I could do that. Try to make some changes which could possibly be upstreamed. Spend my time going back and forth on minutia in github pull requests. Learn Dart. Figure out how to wrap a typescript & dart app in a macOS native window. Or turn to electron. (Yuck.) But I’m optimising for the feeling of joy and agency over my tools. I also want to experiment with p2p / local first data structures in a real app. I could fork immich and rewrite the data model. But that all seems much less fun. At the end of the day, I’m not doing this for other people. I’m doing this for me. Learning dart so I can hack on someone else’s code sounds like a pain in the butt. Not like something I’d want to do for fun on the weekend. Working on someone else’s code seems like a strange default. You and others have jumped on me for wanting to make my own thing instead of using - or forking - someone else’s software. Can you help me understand why? Why would that be the default for a fun hobby project? I’m confused.
- righthand 5mo ago
  Ente photos is one thing and there are others. You can accomplish most of that by installing Syncthing. But the objection is that you’re not really building anything new even if you think it’s a new idea. By your definition you’re building for yourself and not sharing…so what good are your little projects. Reading your original list it just seems like you want to build and run software without having to do any research, even if a solution already exists.
  - argee 5mo ago
    I have everything this guy is talking about just from running Filerun (with the Nextcloud client for mirrors) and backing up to Backblaze R2. At some point developers seem to forget that other developers exist.
    - josephg 5mo ago
      > At some point developers seem to forget that other developers exist. At some point developers seem to forget that making stuff is fun. The fact SQLite and GCC exist doesn't mean you're banned from making a database or a C compiler. You're allowed to make stuff just because.
  - josephg 5mo ago
    > But the objection is that you’re not really building anything new even if you think it’s a new idea. By your definition you’re building for yourself and not sharing…so what good are your little projects. What an incredibly blinkered view. You think there's no value at all in making software unless your program solves a truly novel problem, and does so for millions of users? There's so much joy that can be found in simple, disposable acts of creativity. I don't need the world to applaud when I cook an omelette, make a table out of wood or play a piece on the piano. Why would I need that from the software I make? Just because you can buy a table from IKEA doesn't mean its not fun to make one yourself. Just because someone on spotify played it better doesn't mean there's no joy in playing music. Why would I hesitate to make my ideal photo library program, just because other programs exist? What a sad, self-limiting rule.
- cryo32 5mo ago
  What's your time and life worth? You pay Apple to deal with it (which I do) and get to live a peaceful life and go out and take photos and have experiences. Or do you spend weeks implementing your own solution with Claude. The latter is considerably higher cost in time and money. AI is seen as a way out of drudgery but you're just trading one problem for another.
  - satvikpendem 5mo ago
    The implementation is part of the fun.
    - ori_b 5mo ago
      So why would you buy it off of Anthropic?
      - satvikpendem 5mo ago
        I don't understand the question. For one thing I use local models mainly, but even if I didn't, I'd be buying the tokens from cloud model providers, not the prepackaged, fully complete software itself. I buy the tokens to make what I want. It's actually quite similar to buying the services of a programmer off Upwork to build something for me, only with LLMs it's way cheaper and faster, with a shorter feedback loop.
        slopinthebag 5mo ago
        I think their point is that you aren't really doing the implementing, Claude (or any model really) is. If you genuinely find prompting LLMs to be fun, then by all means go for it.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        What I find fun is getting the output to exactly what I want. I don't care whether I'm personally implementing something or not, and that's what many in this thread seem not to understand.

cryo32 5mo ago

Leisure projects for me at least are about the personal challenge and achievement. If the LLM does it, you achieved nothing.

r2_pilot 5mo ago
I'm glad that you find achievement in the personal challenge. At home, I'm just getting things done. Small things, bigger things, and best of all I get to pet the dog more while it works in the background.
- cryo32 5mo ago
  Yeah so don't bother. I don't write code at home. What's the point? I go on holiday once a month!
  - josephg 5mo ago
    So, you don't even work on personal projects? But you want to lecture everyone else about how to do them correctly (according to you)? What a waste of time.
    - cryo32 5mo ago
      I spent years working on personal projects. Back to 1988. Think I have a fair bit of experience.
whstl 5mo ago
Are you assuming that "using a LLM" automatically means "vibe coding"? Is it not engineering anymore even if you micromanage and relegate the machine to a better typist, following patterns and doing research around?
josephg 5mo ago
> If the LLM does it, you achieved nothing. Oh get off your high horse. You may as well say "If the compiler compiles your code, you achieved nothing". Its the same argument. I love meaty algorithmic challenges. And I enjoy the design challenge of making a piece of software. But I don't write CSS for fun. Debugging styling issues on mobile? I hate it. LLMs let me work on the parts that I find enjoyable and satisfying. Like UI design, or figuring out the data model. And then I can delegate the parts I don't like to Claude. It seems very happy to bang away at CSS. That's a great deal. If you want to personally write every line of code, good for you. But don't police my leisure projects.

throwaway13337 5mo ago

I feel the same way as you. But was unfortunately not surprised to see the replies you are getting here. There are a ton of opportunities available right now to make new things. And make them better, more customizable, and more sovereign. To the replies: be the change you want to see in the world, guys. That may be trite but focusing only on the negative will just make your own life shitty.

ori_b 5mo ago

And you're actually excited by the prospect of buying them from Anthropic instead of making them?

satvikpendem 5mo ago
Open weight models exist and are good enough to make the projects above.
- ori_b 5mo ago
  And you're actually excited about these table scraps that companies couldn't even monetize, rather than making something?
  - satvikpendem 5mo ago
    Couldn't even monetize? DeepSeek and Alibaba with Qwen are doing quite well, no table scraps required. I am making things, I don't have to physically type letters on a keyboard to make things as long as the output of what I want exists.
  - rrvsh 5mo ago
    You are being needlessly combative. Please take a step back and look at what you are doing - I don't think this is positive for you or anybody
josephg 5mo ago
Suppose you're the senior engineer on a project. You design the UI of the software. Then design how you want the software to work internally. Then write the core data structures. And then guide a bunch of junior engineers to write the code, review their work. Is that the same as buying a computer program from anthropic? I have a friend who's an architect. Sometimes we're in the city and he says "Oh see that building? Its one of mine." He didn't lay the concrete, or do the wiring or anything. Should he not be proud, because a construction company built each floor? Does it not count? Does his contribution not matter?

sillyfluke 5mo ago

I support this take especially since you added the "I don't care if nobody else uses what I make", but you should at least acknowledge what you're talking about is pretty unrelated to the article, as the author's entire context seems to be making something for other people to use and building it together with other people. Since you said you want to make those things that you list, I assume none of these things have been built yet. If so, I would encourage you to consider how excited you will be to constantly maintain those things you build. But even if the maintainence cycle won't be as exciting, since you are the sole user you have the advantage of being able to proceed at a leisurely pace even while doing maintainence work. In a professional setting, the dopamine hit of being able to build something quickly that works in an area that you have little to no knowledge in makes you more dependent on the AI in the maintaince cycle as you want to chase that dopamine high by maintaining the same development speed. This in turn leads to a bigger burnout crash after that peak dopamine hit. Maintainence is a phase of diminishing returns even without AI, but when your coding agents are introducing new bugs at record pace with their bugfixes with no new features to write home about you are in a special place in Hell. I'm all for using AI to build ambitious projects. I have yet to see a person/company/organization continuously release huge software endeavours in a stable professional manner day in and day out with a coding agent harem in tow. If something like the Ladybird browser, or any browser that is "built by scratch", achieved Chrome parity in six months and consistently maintained the same level of stability with continuous releases then I would see that as proof that this approach has become professionaly sustainable. The reason people are getting away with so much using AI is because of the open secret in most enterprise engineering practices: the customer cares more about the response time for fixes they report than they do about overall or longterm product quality.

josephg 5mo ago
> I would encourage you to consider how excited you will be to constantly maintain those things you build. Why should I consider that? Its funny how the default with programming is that the piece of software exists forever. I've been learning to play the piano lately. The default with piano is that every piece is ephemeral. If I don't go out of my way to record something I play, after the notes have run out, the piece is gone forever. The same is true of cooking - except you can't record a meal at all. Once you eat it, its gone. Lots of art forms are like this - theatre. Dance. The circus. They're no less beautiful for being ephemeral. Why do we assume software has to be maintained indefinitely? Why even think about that right now? Maybe I'll work on these projects for awhile, maintain them as long as I want, and then in a few years someone will make something way better and I'll use that instead? Would that make the effort I put in pointless? I don't think so. I think it would make programming more like playing the piano. How lovely. > I'm all for using AI to build ambitious projects. I have yet to see a person/company/organization continuously release huge software endeavours in a stable professional manner day in and day out with a coding agent harem in tow. Yes, I've burned through enough claude tokens now that I find myself agreeing with you. I wouldn't use an LLM to make and maintain google chrome. But I wasn't planning on doing that anyway. There are also a lot more options than (1) write everything yourself and (2) vibe code the whole thing. LLMs are good at small-to-medium scope tasks right now. Fine. I'll use them - or not use them - with their limitations in mind.

slopinthebag 5mo ago

The issue is maintenance. If you want to use these projects for important things, you need to maintain them. If you don't want to maintain them, I can't see myself using them for anything important. I actually want less software for myself. Less things to maintain. I've become a "digital minimalist" in that I use very few software, only ones maintained by others who can afford and are willing to keep them working.

josephg 5mo ago
Some people find freedom in building their own house. Some people find freedom in living in a serviced apartment. Some people find joy in home cooked meals. To others, wealth is never needing to cook again. To each their own. As for maintenance, I think LLMs are actually very well suited for small maintenance tasks. The expensive part of programming is loading and unloading context into my head. "Oh dear, what is all this code doing? Oh no, coffeescript? And some ancient version of express JS? How does any of this work?". LLMs can bomb in, fix a compilation error and bomb out. "This program isn't compiling any more on macos X.Y.Z. Read the patch notes. Figure out why and fix the problem." Perfect.