7 ms·

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single lin

by planb 2mo ago

I know many people agree but I can’t really follow this sentiment. I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM even if I did not write a single line of code for it. I wouldn’t show it around and proclaim what a great programmer I am, because I did not program it, but coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product. When I plan a remake of my garden and then hire a professional landscaping company to build it, I can still sit on my patio in the sunset with a cold beer and be proud of my new cozy environment. I feed the same way about software. My vibe coded guitar tab editor has features that no other software has that I needed and it’s solving a real problem I had. I would never have created it without AI, because I simply don’t have the time besides my job, family and other hobbies (like really practicing playing guitar). So fine, tell me I shouldn’t be proud of it, but don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it.

Zolomon 2mo ago
To me there is a difference that lies in the words. E.g. `making` and `producing` both result in the creation of something, but `making` has a more active part while `producing` has a more supervisory part. This became more relevant to me when I began meeting producers as a software engineer in game development.
- revetkn 2mo ago
  To me, the idea is that you have something in your head and you want to "project" it into reality. I suppose the difference between makers and producers then is that makers happen to enjoy the labor part of that projection, while producers don't particularly care about it (nor want to care).
- planb 2mo ago
  But that’s just arguing about the meaning of the word “make” now. The real discussion does not seem to be about words though but about value. If you find vibe-coded software worthless, you value the process and work that went into it more than the finished end product. I can fully understand this. But it’s just not the way I feel about it.
  - apsurd 2mo ago
    > But that’s just arguing about the meaning of the word “make” now. This is what communication is. Words are representations for whatever it is that we're talking about. There is no other way. Agree with you on what we're talking about, disagree on the stance. It's a discussion of value yes. vibe-coded software has less "I made this" value but still holds "does this have utility" value. They're different. Making things with AI is its own kind of making, but it is not the same kind of making as baking a cake from scratch, building a doghouse, or planting your own garden.
- networked 2mo ago
  "Produce" is a good verb. "Direct", too, if it's a creative work and you give close instructions and make judgements calls. "Design" is accurate if you prompt with an idea about the form of what you want. "Make" gets confusing for AI-assisted projects because it carries a connotation of craft. It seems fully justified for a code project that is 90% you, 10% AI (you'd say you made something that was 90% you, 10% human help) and misleading for a project that is 90% AI, 10% you (unless the meaning of the word shifts). Here is a relevant comment I wrote in a thread about AI art (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705952#46708186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705952#46708186): >> If you do it daily, in-house, for your own products... you might just have the title "Art Director." > "Art director" seems accurate for what a skillful user of art generators with a specific vision does. > I have also thought that since people find "director" lofty (thanks to auteur theory?) and therefore pretentious to assume, one could borrow "producer" from Vocaloid: https://vocaloid.fandom.com/wiki/Producer https://vocaloid.fandom.com/wiki/Producer (alternative front end: https://antifandom.com/vocaloid/wiki/Producer https://antifandom.com/vocaloid/wiki/Producer).
  - bigiain 2mo ago
    > I find "make" potentially confusing with AI-assisted projects. I'm feeling this right now. I have a working prototype of a project that has mirrors mounted on pan/tilt mechanisms driven by servos and controlled by an Arduino. I modeled the mirror mechanisms myself in OpenSCAD and 3D printed them, I laid out the wiring from my head, I assembled everything by hand. But I got Codex to write the Arduino code that uses a GPS module to get the location and time, calculates the sun position, and (with some manual calibration) aims the mirrors to beam sunlight 'pixels' in an x/z grid on the wall. It works. But for some reason it's profoundly unsatisfying. I'm very unlikely to go from this 4 mirror prototype to the original dream of a James Web Space Telescope model in my courtyard with 18 steerable mirrors drawing low res 1 bit pixel art on my dining room wall.
uncivilized 2mo ago
In your examples, you didn’t “make” anything. The person whose work trained the LLM made the work. The landscaper made the lawn. I don’t know how it’s possible to take pride in doing nothing. I can hire a maid to make my bed for me and tell her how exactly to fluff my pillows and duvet but I would take no pride in that.
- planb 2mo ago
  Let’s not argue about the meaning of “making”, but that’s a very limited view of how value is created. So in your view the producer or even the director of a movie cannot take pride in it because the actors are the ones doing the work?
  - aNapierkowski 2mo ago
    you can take pride in it, definitely added value and also acknowledge that an actor turned director (to keep the metaphor going) may have different feelings about the process even if they are happy with the end result similarly a coder turned manager or director may have some internal struggle with not actually doing the coding anymore -- similar to how one might feel having made a product or feature entirely with AI coding Article does take a stance on the term "making" vs "having a hand in creation" fwiw. I guess the latter doesn't have a great term yet which is why an argument over the term making is sincere
  - themacguffinman 2mo ago
    A large part of how actors act is specific cues given to them by the director, which is pretty clearly work by the director. A director also gives specific instructions for a lot of other things that have a noticeable impact on the resulting value of the movie. That's different from telling a maid to generally clean your home. If you gave a maid specific instructions on how to clean and how to move things around in a way that made a noticeable impact on how clean your house ended up being, you could be proud of the managerial work you're doing. But no one does that, because people pay money to not have to work. Likewise, if you just told an LLM to let it rip on a general task then you're not doing much work, but if you were managing the LLM to do specific things then you are doing significant work.
jscd 2mo ago
I don't think the "would not exist if I hadn't created it" argument really works. If I delegate a project to someone else, and they do the project, does that mean I did it? In my mind, I could comfortably say I managed it, or I designed some parts of it, but I really couldn't take the credit for actually doing it. You wanted it to be done, so you asked someone to do it. If anything, I would say your conclusion should be flipped: you didn't really do the "making," but you can still be proud of what you _did_ do: provide direction and a vision for a solution to a problem.
- ModernMech 2mo ago
  What about a director of a movie. They aren't responsible for the creative performances but they are certainly given a heap of credit for having made the movie. I ask 10 actors for 10 scenes and I combine them into a movie I wanted. I ask 10 agents for 10 functions and I combine them into a program I wanted. What's the difference and why is the guy who used agents not credited the same way as a director? Maybe all that's missing is a long list of credits for everyone involved -- so transparency in who did what?
  - geodel 2mo ago
    10 agents for 10 function sounds like IT director. I see enterprises are full of those and they are getting credited appropriately for "AI led innovation" at workplace. The difference with Movie director at least is in details. IT director most likely does not care about Python, bash, js, mermaid, performance characteristics and so many other things that AI agent might have used to solve the problem. The user of these AI innovation are not having much say. They are not going to be voting with their wallet or feet. For movie director the details of process matters a lot. Unless of course I am shooting 2 min video on my Motorola phone, while my kid is cutting her birthday cake, and call myself a movie director while doing it.
    - ModernMech 2mo ago
      So you're saying the difference is just in how many details are specified or how deeply the director cares about the details? i.e. if you have a DSLR and you point it at a subject and press the shutter button, that doesn't make you a "photographer"; but if you do the same while adjusting all the knobs and such using knowledge from your brain to get an intended result, that's what makes you a "photographer", despite in both cases the camera is doing the same amount of work? So in the AI prompting case, if you send out a prompt to "clone twitter", that doesn't make you a "software director" (or whatever we might call it); but if you do the same while specifying the system topology, the various transport protocols, the implementation language, the database schema, then you might be a "software director". Is that what you're saying?
dd8601fn 2mo ago
Seems pretty simple in your analogy. You can be proud of having commissioned a thing… be it landscaping or software… just not for making anything you didn’t. And of course there are shades of grey in between, depending on how critical you were to the doing.
- sethammons 2mo ago
  There is a missing word. "Make" is too loose and people disagree that it applies because they disagree on the base meaning of the word. "Commission" is much closer to what is happening, but I am not sure it is it. "Vibe-Coded" tries and fails to fill the niche.
dwroberts 2mo ago
> I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM You didn't make it
- stronglikedan 2mo ago
  An LLM doesn't do anything on its own. One needs to make the choice to build something, make choices about how it's built, and make decisions on how it should work. The LLM makes the output of those decisions, but in the end it's just one of the tools that was used to make a part of the system that was built.
  - Balooga 2mo ago
    In my head "make" implies copyright. If you make it then copyright belongs to you unless you sign that away. You prompted, the LLM made. The output of the LLM is not eligible for copyright. You can perhaps copyright the prompt. That you did make.
wlesieutre 2mo ago
> don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it. So like when I went to a restaurant last week and "made" a cheeseburger with no lettuce and extra onions, because it wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it. To me, making something can mean you did the physical work of its creation even if there's no particular creative expression, like "I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." It can also apply to tasks where you've offloaded a bunch of work that once would've been done by hand, like "I made this bench using a circular saw." Where things get hairy even with physical objects is processes like CNC or 3D printers. If you download "Articulated dragon.stl" from a website and press the print button, did you make that? Personally, no. But if you designed your own flexy dragon and printed it, then yes. If you set up a relief carving on a CNC machine or do a perfectly fit inlay, are you making that? Operating these still takes quite a bit of knowledge and skill, but different knowledge and skill from hand woodworking. What if the tools improve and become very easy to operate? I don't think there's a hard line you can draw. But if there is, it's somewhere between "did everything by hand with no assistance from recently invented tools because those are cheating" and "ordered a sandwich and waited for the finished result to show up."
- InitialBP 2mo ago
  The restaurant comparison doesn't really hold up. The parent didn't go choose from a menu of new apps that they wanted AI to create. They discovered a problem or a feature that doesn't exist on other platforms and they employed tools to create that. Does a product manager not get to claim they "made" something because they plan it out and employ others to actually build the finished product? Both of the examples the parent gave include some kind of planning and ideating to get to a final product, regardless of the fact that they employed tools to do a bulk of the coding work.
  - echelon 2mo ago
    You did not make the cheeseburger. Yet, Christopher Nolan made "The Odyssey" Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma made "Ocarina of Time" Mark Zuckerberg made "Meta" I feel just as proud of everything I'm making with LLM, image, and video models as I do the code I wrote by hand for years and the photons I shot on film to make movies. This is just a new higher level thing. I'm still the "director". It's my design and my taste. Author is right about this though, > "Didn't take long. Only about 50x longer than it would have taken Claude to do it." I'm never writing code by hand again. I stopped in February.
2III7 2mo ago
Many people have a disillusion that an LLM is something more than a tool.
- skydhash 2mo ago
  Git is also a tool, but cloning a repo does not means I created the software.
  - storkhound 2mo ago
    Exactly. It also doesn't obscure the original property rights or licensing, nor can it be done without permission of the owner. The LLM crowd just loves the idea that all tools are equivalent with the same set primary-, secondary-, and side-effects, a false claim used as low-effort universal self-absolution.
  - 2III7 2mo ago
    Cool, you can also use a 3D printer/lathe/CNC machine to clone a mechanical patented physical item. Plagiary can be done with any existing tool/method, you don't need an LLM for that.
tombert 2mo ago
When Claude Code/Codex first came about I'll admit it depressed me a bit, but I ended up realizing that the "code" part wasn't the part that I actually enjoyed about software engineering. Instead, what I've been doing for my personal projects has been about designing algorithms with TLA+. I write that by hand, model check and sometimes even prove the properties I think are interesting or useful, and then tell Claude to implement it based on the spec. Usually I still need to correct the generated code but it's a lot less. Certainly in these cases, I take pride in what I did, because ultimately the "Invisible Hand" always means I'm outsourcing some of the work of a project no matter how involved I want to be. If I build a deck outside, I'm not forging the nails myself, I'm not growing and chopping down the trees for lumber, I'm not designing my own power tools, etc. There's always a level of outsourcing of the work that I don't find interesting or that I don't know how to do, or don't have the resources to do myself. With software, the parts that I end up feeling proudest of, and this predates widespread use of LLMs, are the algorithms and tricks I come up with to build something. When I figure out a way to avoid a lock, or figure out a way to use less memory, or figure out a way to increase throughput, I'm less concerned with the actual "code", and much more concerned about the "how".
pbohun 2mo ago
If all you care about is the end product and not how it's made, then you never become a better person. Your capacity for thinking and solving problems will never grow. You will never be an expert. Experts care about the process. Of course, you may not care, and that's fine. It's important that people not be delusional about this though. A person with no medical knowledge and an AI will never be as good as someone with prodigious medical knowledge and an AI. The same is true for any profession, whether programming, music, writing, etc.
- planb 2mo ago
  Of course. But I have been programming for over 30 years and I know that I cannot be an expert for everything. Besides that, maybe my capacity for thinking won’t grow anymore. But my capacity for solving problems just exploded in the last few years thanks to AI.
  - sashank_1509 2mo ago
    But you didn’t solve anything. AI solved it. If you go to a coffee shop and ask extra ice, less sugar, more vanilla - did you make the coffee or the barista make the coffe and you just gave some requests to him. Using an LLM is far more similar to ordering coffee from a barista than it is to actually making the coffee. Of course the barista didn’t make the seeds, the milk etc. This is not an exact lawyerly statement. But intuitively, you didn’t make anything when Claude Code writes all your code.
    - ModernMech 2mo ago
      Why do you think using AI to write code is like ordering a coffee? They don't seem very similar to me so I'm curious how you see them as similar.
    - marcus_holmes 2mo ago
      If an expert barista goes to a coffee shop and orders a coffee, do they get a better quality coffee? Because it's a common experience of folks using LLMs to code (and other activities) that experts get better results than non-experts. So it definitely suggests that the human is part of the making process, not just the recipient of the finished product as in your coffee example.
alexruf 2mo ago
I completely agree with you, because I usually think the same way and I'm more concerned with the result than the path taken to achieve it. But you shouldn't forget that there are definitely people who work the exact opposite way. They don't care at all about having something functional in their hands at the end, because they just enjoy the process of building. And as soon as it's finished, they tear it all down anyway just to start over again with a different approach.
apsurd 2mo ago
Plenty of comments already. "I made this" is a reserved concept for one's hands being in the clay. It's different. It is its own experience. And it is different from any other approach toward the end result. That's it.
jerbearito 2mo ago
> but don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it You did NOT make the software that you generated with AI. But there's nothing wrong with you feeling proud of initiating it. If anyone tells you that you shouldn't feel proud of the prompting you did, please just ignore that person.
dimbletimbers 2mo ago
I can relate to and sympathize with time constraints and convenience arguments, but I think it’s more accurate in both the landscaping and app examples to say it wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t _asked/paid_ for it. And you could have made it and then you could have been proud of it. And at least some of time, that’s more valuable than an unspecified “product”. I’m more attached to things I made than things I bought.
jimbokun 2mo ago
Just like those Southern plantation owners were so proud of all the things they “made” with slave labor.
bowsamic 2mo ago
> coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product I think that's the main difference. For many of us, the process and how we grow through that process really is as important as, if not more important than, the result
gspr 2mo ago
I think this is some of the most interesting revelation to come about during these times: there seems to be two kinds of people – those for whom the act doing something well has the highest inherent value, and those for whom accomplishing well has the highest inherent value. This of course doesn't mean the former group doesn't care about the outcome, or that the latter group does poor work. But the dichotomy seems very real. We've had conversations at work where the room splits in two and both sides struggle to grasp how the other side can possibly feel that way. Everyone involved respects eachothers' skills, but we've never known about this fundamental schism until now, and it's like discovering that half your coworkers are aliens.
z0ltan 2mo ago
[dead]

by planb 2mo ago

Zolomon 2mo ago

To me there is a difference that lies in the words. E.g. `making` and `producing` both result in the creation of something, but `making` has a more active part while `producing` has a more supervisory part. This became more relevant to me when I began meeting producers as a software engineer in game development.

revetkn 2mo ago
To me, the idea is that you have something in your head and you want to "project" it into reality. I suppose the difference between makers and producers then is that makers happen to enjoy the labor part of that projection, while producers don't particularly care about it (nor want to care).
planb 2mo ago
But that’s just arguing about the meaning of the word “make” now. The real discussion does not seem to be about words though but about value. If you find vibe-coded software worthless, you value the process and work that went into it more than the finished end product. I can fully understand this. But it’s just not the way I feel about it.
- apsurd 2mo ago
  > But that’s just arguing about the meaning of the word “make” now. This is what communication is. Words are representations for whatever it is that we're talking about. There is no other way. Agree with you on what we're talking about, disagree on the stance. It's a discussion of value yes. vibe-coded software has less "I made this" value but still holds "does this have utility" value. They're different. Making things with AI is its own kind of making, but it is not the same kind of making as baking a cake from scratch, building a doghouse, or planting your own garden.
networked 2mo ago
"Produce" is a good verb. "Direct", too, if it's a creative work and you give close instructions and make judgements calls. "Design" is accurate if you prompt with an idea about the form of what you want. "Make" gets confusing for AI-assisted projects because it carries a connotation of craft. It seems fully justified for a code project that is 90% you, 10% AI (you'd say you made something that was 90% you, 10% human help) and misleading for a project that is 90% AI, 10% you (unless the meaning of the word shifts). Here is a relevant comment I wrote in a thread about AI art (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705952#46708186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705952#46708186): >> If you do it daily, in-house, for your own products... you might just have the title "Art Director." > "Art director" seems accurate for what a skillful user of art generators with a specific vision does. > I have also thought that since people find "director" lofty (thanks to auteur theory?) and therefore pretentious to assume, one could borrow "producer" from Vocaloid: https://vocaloid.fandom.com/wiki/Producer https://vocaloid.fandom.com/wiki/Producer (alternative front end: https://antifandom.com/vocaloid/wiki/Producer https://antifandom.com/vocaloid/wiki/Producer).
- bigiain 2mo ago
  > I find "make" potentially confusing with AI-assisted projects. I'm feeling this right now. I have a working prototype of a project that has mirrors mounted on pan/tilt mechanisms driven by servos and controlled by an Arduino. I modeled the mirror mechanisms myself in OpenSCAD and 3D printed them, I laid out the wiring from my head, I assembled everything by hand. But I got Codex to write the Arduino code that uses a GPS module to get the location and time, calculates the sun position, and (with some manual calibration) aims the mirrors to beam sunlight 'pixels' in an x/z grid on the wall. It works. But for some reason it's profoundly unsatisfying. I'm very unlikely to go from this 4 mirror prototype to the original dream of a James Web Space Telescope model in my courtyard with 18 steerable mirrors drawing low res 1 bit pixel art on my dining room wall.

uncivilized 2mo ago

In your examples, you didn’t “make” anything. The person whose work trained the LLM made the work. The landscaper made the lawn. I don’t know how it’s possible to take pride in doing nothing. I can hire a maid to make my bed for me and tell her how exactly to fluff my pillows and duvet but I would take no pride in that.

planb 2mo ago
Let’s not argue about the meaning of “making”, but that’s a very limited view of how value is created. So in your view the producer or even the director of a movie cannot take pride in it because the actors are the ones doing the work?
- aNapierkowski 2mo ago
  you can take pride in it, definitely added value and also acknowledge that an actor turned director (to keep the metaphor going) may have different feelings about the process even if they are happy with the end result similarly a coder turned manager or director may have some internal struggle with not actually doing the coding anymore -- similar to how one might feel having made a product or feature entirely with AI coding Article does take a stance on the term "making" vs "having a hand in creation" fwiw. I guess the latter doesn't have a great term yet which is why an argument over the term making is sincere
- themacguffinman 2mo ago
  A large part of how actors act is specific cues given to them by the director, which is pretty clearly work by the director. A director also gives specific instructions for a lot of other things that have a noticeable impact on the resulting value of the movie. That's different from telling a maid to generally clean your home. If you gave a maid specific instructions on how to clean and how to move things around in a way that made a noticeable impact on how clean your house ended up being, you could be proud of the managerial work you're doing. But no one does that, because people pay money to not have to work. Likewise, if you just told an LLM to let it rip on a general task then you're not doing much work, but if you were managing the LLM to do specific things then you are doing significant work.

jscd 2mo ago

I don't think the "would not exist if I hadn't created it" argument really works. If I delegate a project to someone else, and they do the project, does that mean I did it? In my mind, I could comfortably say I managed it, or I designed some parts of it, but I really couldn't take the credit for actually doing it. You wanted it to be done, so you asked someone to do it. If anything, I would say your conclusion should be flipped: you didn't really do the "making," but you can still be proud of what you _did_ do: provide direction and a vision for a solution to a problem.

ModernMech 2mo ago
What about a director of a movie. They aren't responsible for the creative performances but they are certainly given a heap of credit for having made the movie. I ask 10 actors for 10 scenes and I combine them into a movie I wanted. I ask 10 agents for 10 functions and I combine them into a program I wanted. What's the difference and why is the guy who used agents not credited the same way as a director? Maybe all that's missing is a long list of credits for everyone involved -- so transparency in who did what?
- geodel 2mo ago
  10 agents for 10 function sounds like IT director. I see enterprises are full of those and they are getting credited appropriately for "AI led innovation" at workplace. The difference with Movie director at least is in details. IT director most likely does not care about Python, bash, js, mermaid, performance characteristics and so many other things that AI agent might have used to solve the problem. The user of these AI innovation are not having much say. They are not going to be voting with their wallet or feet. For movie director the details of process matters a lot. Unless of course I am shooting 2 min video on my Motorola phone, while my kid is cutting her birthday cake, and call myself a movie director while doing it.
  - ModernMech 2mo ago
    So you're saying the difference is just in how many details are specified or how deeply the director cares about the details? i.e. if you have a DSLR and you point it at a subject and press the shutter button, that doesn't make you a "photographer"; but if you do the same while adjusting all the knobs and such using knowledge from your brain to get an intended result, that's what makes you a "photographer", despite in both cases the camera is doing the same amount of work? So in the AI prompting case, if you send out a prompt to "clone twitter", that doesn't make you a "software director" (or whatever we might call it); but if you do the same while specifying the system topology, the various transport protocols, the implementation language, the database schema, then you might be a "software director". Is that what you're saying?

dd8601fn 2mo ago

Seems pretty simple in your analogy. You can be proud of having commissioned a thing… be it landscaping or software… just not for making anything you didn’t. And of course there are shades of grey in between, depending on how critical you were to the doing.

sethammons 2mo ago
There is a missing word. "Make" is too loose and people disagree that it applies because they disagree on the base meaning of the word. "Commission" is much closer to what is happening, but I am not sure it is it. "Vibe-Coded" tries and fails to fill the niche.

dwroberts 2mo ago

> I can still take pride in something I “made” with an LLM You didn't make it

stronglikedan 2mo ago
An LLM doesn't do anything on its own. One needs to make the choice to build something, make choices about how it's built, and make decisions on how it should work. The LLM makes the output of those decisions, but in the end it's just one of the tools that was used to make a part of the system that was built.
- Balooga 2mo ago
  In my head "make" implies copyright. If you make it then copyright belongs to you unless you sign that away. You prompted, the LLM made. The output of the LLM is not eligible for copyright. You can perhaps copyright the prompt. That you did make.

wlesieutre 2mo ago

> don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it. So like when I went to a restaurant last week and "made" a cheeseburger with no lettuce and extra onions, because it wouldn't exist if I hadn't created it. To me, making something can mean you did the physical work of its creation even if there's no particular creative expression, like "I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich." It can also apply to tasks where you've offloaded a bunch of work that once would've been done by hand, like "I made this bench using a circular saw." Where things get hairy even with physical objects is processes like CNC or 3D printers. If you download "Articulated dragon.stl" from a website and press the print button, did you make that? Personally, no. But if you designed your own flexy dragon and printed it, then yes. If you set up a relief carving on a CNC machine or do a perfectly fit inlay, are you making that? Operating these still takes quite a bit of knowledge and skill, but different knowledge and skill from hand woodworking. What if the tools improve and become very easy to operate? I don't think there's a hard line you can draw. But if there is, it's somewhere between "did everything by hand with no assistance from recently invented tools because those are cheating" and "ordered a sandwich and waited for the finished result to show up."

InitialBP 2mo ago
The restaurant comparison doesn't really hold up. The parent didn't go choose from a menu of new apps that they wanted AI to create. They discovered a problem or a feature that doesn't exist on other platforms and they employed tools to create that. Does a product manager not get to claim they "made" something because they plan it out and employ others to actually build the finished product? Both of the examples the parent gave include some kind of planning and ideating to get to a final product, regardless of the fact that they employed tools to do a bulk of the coding work.
- echelon 2mo ago
  You did not make the cheeseburger. Yet, Christopher Nolan made "The Odyssey" Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma made "Ocarina of Time" Mark Zuckerberg made "Meta" I feel just as proud of everything I'm making with LLM, image, and video models as I do the code I wrote by hand for years and the photons I shot on film to make movies. This is just a new higher level thing. I'm still the "director". It's my design and my taste. Author is right about this though, > "Didn't take long. Only about 50x longer than it would have taken Claude to do it." I'm never writing code by hand again. I stopped in February.

2III7 2mo ago

Many people have a disillusion that an LLM is something more than a tool.

skydhash 2mo ago
Git is also a tool, but cloning a repo does not means I created the software.
- storkhound 2mo ago
  Exactly. It also doesn't obscure the original property rights or licensing, nor can it be done without permission of the owner. The LLM crowd just loves the idea that all tools are equivalent with the same set primary-, secondary-, and side-effects, a false claim used as low-effort universal self-absolution.
- 2III7 2mo ago
  Cool, you can also use a 3D printer/lathe/CNC machine to clone a mechanical patented physical item. Plagiary can be done with any existing tool/method, you don't need an LLM for that.

tombert 2mo ago

When Claude Code/Codex first came about I'll admit it depressed me a bit, but I ended up realizing that the "code" part wasn't the part that I actually enjoyed about software engineering. Instead, what I've been doing for my personal projects has been about designing algorithms with TLA+. I write that by hand, model check and sometimes even prove the properties I think are interesting or useful, and then tell Claude to implement it based on the spec. Usually I still need to correct the generated code but it's a lot less. Certainly in these cases, I take pride in what I did, because ultimately the "Invisible Hand" always means I'm outsourcing some of the work of a project no matter how involved I want to be. If I build a deck outside, I'm not forging the nails myself, I'm not growing and chopping down the trees for lumber, I'm not designing my own power tools, etc. There's always a level of outsourcing of the work that I don't find interesting or that I don't know how to do, or don't have the resources to do myself. With software, the parts that I end up feeling proudest of, and this predates widespread use of LLMs, are the algorithms and tricks I come up with to build something. When I figure out a way to avoid a lock, or figure out a way to use less memory, or figure out a way to increase throughput, I'm less concerned with the actual "code", and much more concerned about the "how".

pbohun 2mo ago

If all you care about is the end product and not how it's made, then you never become a better person. Your capacity for thinking and solving problems will never grow. You will never be an expert. Experts care about the process. Of course, you may not care, and that's fine. It's important that people not be delusional about this though. A person with no medical knowledge and an AI will never be as good as someone with prodigious medical knowledge and an AI. The same is true for any profession, whether programming, music, writing, etc.

planb 2mo ago
Of course. But I have been programming for over 30 years and I know that I cannot be an expert for everything. Besides that, maybe my capacity for thinking won’t grow anymore. But my capacity for solving problems just exploded in the last few years thanks to AI.
- sashank_1509 2mo ago
  But you didn’t solve anything. AI solved it. If you go to a coffee shop and ask extra ice, less sugar, more vanilla - did you make the coffee or the barista make the coffe and you just gave some requests to him. Using an LLM is far more similar to ordering coffee from a barista than it is to actually making the coffee. Of course the barista didn’t make the seeds, the milk etc. This is not an exact lawyerly statement. But intuitively, you didn’t make anything when Claude Code writes all your code.
  - ModernMech 2mo ago
    Why do you think using AI to write code is like ordering a coffee? They don't seem very similar to me so I'm curious how you see them as similar.
  - marcus_holmes 2mo ago
    If an expert barista goes to a coffee shop and orders a coffee, do they get a better quality coffee? Because it's a common experience of folks using LLMs to code (and other activities) that experts get better results than non-experts. So it definitely suggests that the human is part of the making process, not just the recipient of the finished product as in your coffee example.

alexruf 2mo ago

I completely agree with you, because I usually think the same way and I'm more concerned with the result than the path taken to achieve it. But you shouldn't forget that there are definitely people who work the exact opposite way. They don't care at all about having something functional in their hands at the end, because they just enjoy the process of building. And as soon as it's finished, they tear it all down anyway just to start over again with a different approach.

apsurd 2mo ago

Plenty of comments already. "I made this" is a reserved concept for one's hands being in the clay. It's different. It is its own experience. And it is different from any other approach toward the end result. That's it.

jerbearito 2mo ago

> but don’t tell me I did not “make” it because it simply would not exist if I hadn’t created it You did NOT make the software that you generated with AI. But there's nothing wrong with you feeling proud of initiating it. If anyone tells you that you shouldn't feel proud of the prompting you did, please just ignore that person.

dimbletimbers 2mo ago

I can relate to and sympathize with time constraints and convenience arguments, but I think it’s more accurate in both the landscaping and app examples to say it wouldn’t exist if you hadn’t _asked/paid_ for it. And you could have made it and then you could have been proud of it. And at least some of time, that’s more valuable than an unspecified “product”. I’m more attached to things I made than things I bought.

jimbokun 2mo ago

Just like those Southern plantation owners were so proud of all the things they “made” with slave labor.

bowsamic 2mo ago

> coding was never the main goal, it was always the means to create the finished end product I think that's the main difference. For many of us, the process and how we grow through that process really is as important as, if not more important than, the result

gspr 2mo ago

I think this is some of the most interesting revelation to come about during these times: there seems to be two kinds of people – those for whom the act doing something well has the highest inherent value, and those for whom accomplishing well has the highest inherent value. This of course doesn't mean the former group doesn't care about the outcome, or that the latter group does poor work. But the dichotomy seems very real. We've had conversations at work where the room splits in two and both sides struggle to grasp how the other side can possibly feel that way. Everyone involved respects eachothers' skills, but we've never known about this fundamental schism until now, and it's like discovering that half your coworkers are aliens.

z0ltan 2mo ago

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