4 ms·

What an awful position to take. Tech used to be about becoming more accessible to people! Now we have a magical assistant to make computers do what you want wit

by 9dev 2mo ago

What an awful position to take. Tech used to be about becoming more accessible to people! Now we have a magical assistant to make computers do what you want with natural language, and your desire is gate keeping that so only programmers can use it to write software for themselves?

TZubiri 2mo ago
>so only programmers can use it to write software for themselves? Yes? The idea of an assistant that can use natural language is nice! But why would you MAKE software with it, it IS software, just do the thing you want to do! If you want to make an app, be prepared to jump hoops because this is no longer about YOU the user, it's about OTHER users. The idea of making personal single user software is a fantasy, an oxymoron, you MAKE software? there's the presumption that it will be used for other people, otherwise you'd be USING software. There's a counter and you are at either one side or the other. It's the difference between making yourself a sandwich vs making a pot pie vs making chicken nuggets. One has the form factor for individual consumption and the other has the form factor for a social gathering, and the latter is an industrial form factor. Maybe if there were a magic microwave that created random foods from thin air, people would create chicken nuggets or pot pies for themselves, but it's a vestigial maladaptation that will soon dissapear. Any reasonably designed product would try to provide different UX for industrial and individual users. The magic microwave that makes chicken nuggets better not be the same one that an actual factory is using. It's not a matter of cutting the middleman and revolutionizing wealth distribution from those fat chicken-nugget cats, it's about having two distinct products for two distinct usecases. Tl;dr: Personal and industrial usecases are different, and if I'm in the industry, I don't want to use (the same product that end-users are using) to build products. What a clusterfuck.
- retsibsi 2mo ago
  > The idea of making personal single user software is a fantasy, an oxymoron, you MAKE software? there's the presumption that it will be used for other people, otherwise you'd be USING software. It definitely isn't. I've done it (successfully) a few times. > The idea of an assistant that can use natural language is nice! But why would you MAKE software with it, it IS software, just do the thing you want to do! This makes no sense to me. Are you suggesting that instead of using an LLM to make, say, an ebook reader or crossword app that meets my personal needs, I should invoke an LLM every time I want to read a book or do a crossword? That feels like a strawman, but I can't work out what else you might be arguing here.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - TZubiri 2mo ago
    > I should invoke an LLM every time I want to read a book or do a crossword. Well no, I'd say, use any of the existing 100 book readers to read a book, or any of 50 crossword apps. But if you want to use an LLM to customize it the exact way you want it. Yes, use the LLM every time you want to do it. Wanting the LLM to do a previous gen app and then get out of the way sounds like asking for faster horses. Just tell the LLM you want to play a crossword game with X and Y rules, then give it a name so you can play it again in the future if you want, and if you want to try out rule Z, you do that, a la Kay's Dynabook. That may sound weird to you, but asking an LLM to 'make software like we used to' sounds weird to me, and seeing "invoking an LLM every time I want to do X" as weird sounds like something that's true only for a very brief period of time where something is so uncommon that it's inference is expensive.
    - retsibsi 2mo ago
      I can imagine a future where it might make sense. Right now, though, it would make for a far worse experience, and wouldn't even really be practically possible. Both of those examples were real ones. The crossword app runs on my phone, pulls the crosswords from a specific source, and lets me access and solve them via the exact interface I prefer. The ebook app is cross platform, syncs via a remote server, has the interface I want and includes some niche features. There's no realistic way to create that on the fly every time I want to read a book on my phone, and if there were it would be extremely inefficient. And I see literally no advantages to doing so -- even if time and tokens weren't an issue, what would I gain by recreating the apps from a prompt every time I wanted to use them, rather than deterministically running code I have already tested?
      - TZubiri 2mo ago
        I get that you are doing that, but I think the fantasy is that this is creation of software instead of consumption. It's an issue adjacent to licence washing, where mangling some code through an inference layer is considered transformative or even unrelated and the original license doesn't apply. But in this case, what you are washing is not the license, but the valor of writing software. Broadly speaking, your approach would be to have the LLM write application code, my approach would be for the LLM to write commands, 'apt-get install calibre', maybe if I want to add or modify a button I can ask it to hack the X interface. You go straight for the LLM generating the code. There's certainly technical differences between what we are doing, but they are very arbitrary, we are essentially doing the same thing, but what I am doing looks less impressive, and what you are doing you can sell in your CV to potential hiring managers as 'using AI to write software'. It's more about the semantics than the actual requirements. I may be wrong though, maybe your approach is far more effective than just importing transitive dependencies, but I would think it's more about taking credit for the thing and increasing your sense of ownership and achievement. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I just need a way to think of myself as better than others as an unemployed neverviber.
mcmcmc 2mo ago
Incredibly naive, AI is not magic and it won’t always do what you want or expect. Not sure how you’ve determined that I’m gate keeping when I’m simply warning that tech illiteracy can get you in trouble if you start giving mystery black boxes that sometimes call themselves “Mecha Hitler” root access on your machine.
soraminazuki 2mo ago
> Tech used to be about becoming more accessible to people Since when? Because funny story, I only ever hear that narrative from tech people trying to put a self-serving spin on whatever egregious thing they want to impose on others. For the past few decades, the tech industry has consistently acted to wrestle control of people's own lives and place it in the hands of the few. The justification is always the same. It's about "keeping people safe" or "making tech more accessible." People are sick and tired of this, which is demonstrated by public backlash against tech. > your desire is gate keeping that so only programmers can use it to write software for themselves In what universe is learning "gate keeping"? A sane society doesn't criticize people for asking drivers to learn how to drive. What GP is asking for in the case of software development is much less than a driver's license, and yet you question their ethics. If anything, you're the one trying to rob people of their opportunity to learn, which is a prerequisite to making informed decisions. You're the one advocating that we surrender control over computing to a handful of trillion dollar companies. That is an awful position to take.

by 9dev 2mo ago

TZubiri 2mo ago

>so only programmers can use it to write software for themselves? Yes? The idea of an assistant that can use natural language is nice! But why would you MAKE software with it, it IS software, just do the thing you want to do! If you want to make an app, be prepared to jump hoops because this is no longer about YOU the user, it's about OTHER users. The idea of making personal single user software is a fantasy, an oxymoron, you MAKE software? there's the presumption that it will be used for other people, otherwise you'd be USING software. There's a counter and you are at either one side or the other. It's the difference between making yourself a sandwich vs making a pot pie vs making chicken nuggets. One has the form factor for individual consumption and the other has the form factor for a social gathering, and the latter is an industrial form factor. Maybe if there were a magic microwave that created random foods from thin air, people would create chicken nuggets or pot pies for themselves, but it's a vestigial maladaptation that will soon dissapear. Any reasonably designed product would try to provide different UX for industrial and individual users. The magic microwave that makes chicken nuggets better not be the same one that an actual factory is using. It's not a matter of cutting the middleman and revolutionizing wealth distribution from those fat chicken-nugget cats, it's about having two distinct products for two distinct usecases. Tl;dr: Personal and industrial usecases are different, and if I'm in the industry, I don't want to use (the same product that end-users are using) to build products. What a clusterfuck.

retsibsi 2mo ago
> The idea of making personal single user software is a fantasy, an oxymoron, you MAKE software? there's the presumption that it will be used for other people, otherwise you'd be USING software. It definitely isn't. I've done it (successfully) a few times. > The idea of an assistant that can use natural language is nice! But why would you MAKE software with it, it IS software, just do the thing you want to do! This makes no sense to me. Are you suggesting that instead of using an LLM to make, say, an ebook reader or crossword app that meets my personal needs, I should invoke an LLM every time I want to read a book or do a crossword? That feels like a strawman, but I can't work out what else you might be arguing here.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- TZubiri 2mo ago
  > I should invoke an LLM every time I want to read a book or do a crossword. Well no, I'd say, use any of the existing 100 book readers to read a book, or any of 50 crossword apps. But if you want to use an LLM to customize it the exact way you want it. Yes, use the LLM every time you want to do it. Wanting the LLM to do a previous gen app and then get out of the way sounds like asking for faster horses. Just tell the LLM you want to play a crossword game with X and Y rules, then give it a name so you can play it again in the future if you want, and if you want to try out rule Z, you do that, a la Kay's Dynabook. That may sound weird to you, but asking an LLM to 'make software like we used to' sounds weird to me, and seeing "invoking an LLM every time I want to do X" as weird sounds like something that's true only for a very brief period of time where something is so uncommon that it's inference is expensive.
  - retsibsi 2mo ago
    I can imagine a future where it might make sense. Right now, though, it would make for a far worse experience, and wouldn't even really be practically possible. Both of those examples were real ones. The crossword app runs on my phone, pulls the crosswords from a specific source, and lets me access and solve them via the exact interface I prefer. The ebook app is cross platform, syncs via a remote server, has the interface I want and includes some niche features. There's no realistic way to create that on the fly every time I want to read a book on my phone, and if there were it would be extremely inefficient. And I see literally no advantages to doing so -- even if time and tokens weren't an issue, what would I gain by recreating the apps from a prompt every time I wanted to use them, rather than deterministically running code I have already tested?
    - TZubiri 2mo ago
      I get that you are doing that, but I think the fantasy is that this is creation of software instead of consumption. It's an issue adjacent to licence washing, where mangling some code through an inference layer is considered transformative or even unrelated and the original license doesn't apply. But in this case, what you are washing is not the license, but the valor of writing software. Broadly speaking, your approach would be to have the LLM write application code, my approach would be for the LLM to write commands, 'apt-get install calibre', maybe if I want to add or modify a button I can ask it to hack the X interface. You go straight for the LLM generating the code. There's certainly technical differences between what we are doing, but they are very arbitrary, we are essentially doing the same thing, but what I am doing looks less impressive, and what you are doing you can sell in your CV to potential hiring managers as 'using AI to write software'. It's more about the semantics than the actual requirements. I may be wrong though, maybe your approach is far more effective than just importing transitive dependencies, but I would think it's more about taking credit for the thing and increasing your sense of ownership and achievement. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I just need a way to think of myself as better than others as an unemployed neverviber.

mcmcmc 2mo ago

Incredibly naive, AI is not magic and it won’t always do what you want or expect. Not sure how you’ve determined that I’m gate keeping when I’m simply warning that tech illiteracy can get you in trouble if you start giving mystery black boxes that sometimes call themselves “Mecha Hitler” root access on your machine.

soraminazuki 2mo ago

> Tech used to be about becoming more accessible to people Since when? Because funny story, I only ever hear that narrative from tech people trying to put a self-serving spin on whatever egregious thing they want to impose on others. For the past few decades, the tech industry has consistently acted to wrestle control of people's own lives and place it in the hands of the few. The justification is always the same. It's about "keeping people safe" or "making tech more accessible." People are sick and tired of this, which is demonstrated by public backlash against tech. > your desire is gate keeping that so only programmers can use it to write software for themselves In what universe is learning "gate keeping"? A sane society doesn't criticize people for asking drivers to learn how to drive. What GP is asking for in the case of software development is much less than a driver's license, and yet you question their ethics. If anything, you're the one trying to rob people of their opportunity to learn, which is a prerequisite to making informed decisions. You're the one advocating that we surrender control over computing to a handful of trillion dollar companies. That is an awful position to take.