4 ms·

Someone once told me "Some people like writing books. Other people wish they had written a book." People who don't enjoy the craft are not bothered by AI and

by whstl 22d ago

Someone once told me "Some people like writing books. Other people wish they had written a book." People who don't enjoy the craft are not bothered by AI and will replace manual labour with AI. There's nothing with that, but what I don't enjoy about this recent discussion is the assumption that anyone doing things by hand is wasting their time. "You're gonna be obsolete". But that was the reality before, with the stream of criticism directed at people writing game engines, of doing new programming languages, new web frameworks, or anything new really.

imdsm 22d ago
This is interesting because it mixes the process with the reward in an inverse way to what I see from AI pro/con. Those who like writing code have seemed to me to lose out in status from the introduction of AI, while those such as myself who care little for status have used AI more and gained from it. Conversely, those who like writing aren't always about the reward (being an author, having a book published) but those who would like to have written a book regardless of the writing, often are. Interesting mix.
- inquirerGeneral 22d ago
  [dead]
- Chris2048 22d ago
  You contrast "like writing code" with "care little for status", but they are not the same things; as are having status, and caring about it.
socalgal2 22d ago
I just see it as tool. Used to be you had to calculate things by hand on paper. Then we got calculators, then spreadsheets. Complaining that by hand was better seems line nonsense. I'm old enough to have taken typing lessons in high school on typewriters with real ink and needed to use white-out to fix things and if there are too many mistakes having to start over from scratch. I don't want to go back. Construction went from using a tap-and-die to make your own screws, now CnC machines, 3d printers, power drills, etc.... LLMs to me are just another tool. They help me get what I wanted (an app, a game, a web site). I'm still directing. It's still my idea, with the features/look I want. My design choices still make the end project. I really don't get the hate. Was I proud to write my own linked-list library and red-black tree system in the late 80s. Sure. And yet I was much happier when it was just a built in part of the language. I'm really happy I can draw something in a drawing program and not have to sketch it on graph paper like I did in the 80s and manually convert the image to hex codes Each step removed one more piece of friction. I'm not trying to tell you what to like. If you like certain activities be my guest. I like to cook sometimes even though ordering out would be easier. All I'm saying is I don't get the hate that something got easier. We have 1000s of examples fo things getting easier horses -> cars, wagon -> trucks, ships -> planes, oil paints -> photos, math -> spreadsheets, etc... So LLM made yet another thing easier. If you didn't complain about those other things getting easier, why are you complaining now? --- I find it interesting there's a post about inverse kinetics which is could be argued is "how to automate animation" or "how get rid of animators" or "how to make lots of animation less tedious" It's celebrated. Yet LLMs doing the similar things for coding is derided.
- spacedcowboy 22d ago
  I'm with you. I've done some pretty special things over the years I was employed, none of which had any input from LLMs. Now I'm retired and I have a tool at my fingertips that I can instruct, manage, and (sometimes eventually) get what I want. It's not massively dissimilar to managing a group of engineers... The inspiration, the ideas, the workflow, the vision, the end product - all mine. The grunt work that takes all the time - hand it off to the LLM, and make sure it bloody works at the end. With that approach, I built a compiler for my own language - it runs on {Mac, Linux, Windows} and any of those can produce code for {Mac, Linux, Windows, WASM, iOS, Android, Zynq, m68k, 6502} - the last 3 being more useful to me than most people I expect. I have a signed binary running on my phone, which was developed on a Linux box and never saw anything from an Apple Xcode installation... That compiler was how I (and Claude) wrote a WASM client to a server back end, all of which use the exact same classes and data formats, making integration trivial. I'm working on a cross-platform UI framework now, with a Cocoa-like UI description, that you drag lines between your code and the various UI platforms you want to support {Desktop, tablet, phone}, with mobile variants offering portrait and landscape. Write your actual program logic once, and visually connect UI into it, on a target-by-target basis. Support any platform with one codebase. I wouldn't have considered taking on a program of this complexity without the LLM. It'd just have been a pipe-dream. They're tools. Wonderful tools, but still tools.
  - wartywhoa23 22d ago
    Filling your retirement with all those rainbows and unicorns nobody but you care is fine, but what do those who are not retired yet do?
    - danielbln 22d ago
      The same. Think in systems, interfaces, integrations, the problem at hand. Zoom out, leave the grunt work and yak shaving to the machine, and keep your eyes on the price. If you only get satisfaction when you hand set functions in a particular way, then the only thing to say is that time is moving on.
- 22d ago
calvinmorrison 22d ago
what craft though? That is to say - I don't really love programming. I do it out of necessity. Before product managers got looked at as 'too much headcount in an org', I kind of think I would have liked that. I like the outcomes. I like tools that I like to use. I like writing tools and software and systems that work for me. I also like the outcomes for OTHER people. In my line of work, things working is really important - it costs money when things are not working - so I like building those systems that work but also have good tools to inspect when things go amiss or need to be changed. I am like an engineer (I am not) who learned how to use R or Matlab - for the outcome not for the love of the game. Another example may be cars. I am a competent mechanic. I have been employed as a mechanic. The reason I like cars is to drive them. At the end of the day every bolt that is stuck and every radiator I have to drop is excruciating and painful and I hate it, but the look on the customers face when they can get back in their car is priceless.
- whstl 22d ago
  If you can't see craft in programming, then you're most certainly fully replaceable by LLMs. And I mean fully. The "no, but you see, the important part is what I do!" replies get really tiresome after a while.
  - calvinmorrison 21d ago
    probably, i can go work on cars instead.
pessimizer 22d ago
> "Some people like writing books. Other people wish they had written a book." Other people think that books are a communication tool that you use in order to communicate something, and that something is the thing that is actually important. They may suffer from writing a book, and be embarrassed that they've written a book. Enjoying the process is fine. It's a hobby, however, not a form of nobility, and enjoying it doesn't mean you're not terrible at it. If you think the book is the goal, you're lying to yourself. There are plenty of books, they're easy to get. If your goal is the reward that you receive from other people for the books itself i.e. if your goal is to create a valuable commodity, that's fine, too. But a goal in writing books could be to convince or to inform. It's literally the pretext for all communication. I always find it harrowing that having the goal when programming be to create a system that could enable people to accomplish some function, or could accomplish some function for people autonomously seems to be the farthest from people's mind. But it's literally the pretext. You have to be trying to do that or lying about trying to do that to even program at all. Making it a battle between whether the program that you're writing is a product/resume item or a fidget spinner abstracts away reality for a contest between ruthless capitalism and middle-class self-actualization. Greed and narcissism. If you actually want to accomplish something in the world (other than burnishing your self-image), AI is just a tool, not a threat to your identity.
- Chris2048 22d ago
  > books .. communicate something > convince or to inform. It's literally the pretext for all communication ok, so what does a dirty novel, or some other pulp fiction convince or inform you of?
  - johnnyanmac 21d ago
    Sex is communication too. It speaks to whatever escapism you desire or taboo you want to happen before your eyes. You can call the popular "taken off my feet by the mysterious handsome Werewolf that will fight to the death for me" trite. But readers into that have a pretty clear message they want to receive.

by whstl 22d ago

imdsm 22d ago

This is interesting because it mixes the process with the reward in an inverse way to what I see from AI pro/con. Those who like writing code have seemed to me to lose out in status from the introduction of AI, while those such as myself who care little for status have used AI more and gained from it. Conversely, those who like writing aren't always about the reward (being an author, having a book published) but those who would like to have written a book regardless of the writing, often are. Interesting mix.

inquirerGeneral 22d ago
[dead]
Chris2048 22d ago
You contrast "like writing code" with "care little for status", but they are not the same things; as are having status, and caring about it.

socalgal2 22d ago

I just see it as tool. Used to be you had to calculate things by hand on paper. Then we got calculators, then spreadsheets. Complaining that by hand was better seems line nonsense. I'm old enough to have taken typing lessons in high school on typewriters with real ink and needed to use white-out to fix things and if there are too many mistakes having to start over from scratch. I don't want to go back. Construction went from using a tap-and-die to make your own screws, now CnC machines, 3d printers, power drills, etc.... LLMs to me are just another tool. They help me get what I wanted (an app, a game, a web site). I'm still directing. It's still my idea, with the features/look I want. My design choices still make the end project. I really don't get the hate. Was I proud to write my own linked-list library and red-black tree system in the late 80s. Sure. And yet I was much happier when it was just a built in part of the language. I'm really happy I can draw something in a drawing program and not have to sketch it on graph paper like I did in the 80s and manually convert the image to hex codes Each step removed one more piece of friction. I'm not trying to tell you what to like. If you like certain activities be my guest. I like to cook sometimes even though ordering out would be easier. All I'm saying is I don't get the hate that something got easier. We have 1000s of examples fo things getting easier horses -> cars, wagon -> trucks, ships -> planes, oil paints -> photos, math -> spreadsheets, etc... So LLM made yet another thing easier. If you didn't complain about those other things getting easier, why are you complaining now? --- I find it interesting there's a post about inverse kinetics which is could be argued is "how to automate animation" or "how get rid of animators" or "how to make lots of animation less tedious" It's celebrated. Yet LLMs doing the similar things for coding is derided.

spacedcowboy 22d ago
I'm with you. I've done some pretty special things over the years I was employed, none of which had any input from LLMs. Now I'm retired and I have a tool at my fingertips that I can instruct, manage, and (sometimes eventually) get what I want. It's not massively dissimilar to managing a group of engineers... The inspiration, the ideas, the workflow, the vision, the end product - all mine. The grunt work that takes all the time - hand it off to the LLM, and make sure it bloody works at the end. With that approach, I built a compiler for my own language - it runs on {Mac, Linux, Windows} and any of those can produce code for {Mac, Linux, Windows, WASM, iOS, Android, Zynq, m68k, 6502} - the last 3 being more useful to me than most people I expect. I have a signed binary running on my phone, which was developed on a Linux box and never saw anything from an Apple Xcode installation... That compiler was how I (and Claude) wrote a WASM client to a server back end, all of which use the exact same classes and data formats, making integration trivial. I'm working on a cross-platform UI framework now, with a Cocoa-like UI description, that you drag lines between your code and the various UI platforms you want to support {Desktop, tablet, phone}, with mobile variants offering portrait and landscape. Write your actual program logic once, and visually connect UI into it, on a target-by-target basis. Support any platform with one codebase. I wouldn't have considered taking on a program of this complexity without the LLM. It'd just have been a pipe-dream. They're tools. Wonderful tools, but still tools.
- wartywhoa23 22d ago
  Filling your retirement with all those rainbows and unicorns nobody but you care is fine, but what do those who are not retired yet do?
  - danielbln 22d ago
    The same. Think in systems, interfaces, integrations, the problem at hand. Zoom out, leave the grunt work and yak shaving to the machine, and keep your eyes on the price. If you only get satisfaction when you hand set functions in a particular way, then the only thing to say is that time is moving on.
22d ago

calvinmorrison 22d ago

what craft though? That is to say - I don't really love programming. I do it out of necessity. Before product managers got looked at as 'too much headcount in an org', I kind of think I would have liked that. I like the outcomes. I like tools that I like to use. I like writing tools and software and systems that work for me. I also like the outcomes for OTHER people. In my line of work, things working is really important - it costs money when things are not working - so I like building those systems that work but also have good tools to inspect when things go amiss or need to be changed. I am like an engineer (I am not) who learned how to use R or Matlab - for the outcome not for the love of the game. Another example may be cars. I am a competent mechanic. I have been employed as a mechanic. The reason I like cars is to drive them. At the end of the day every bolt that is stuck and every radiator I have to drop is excruciating and painful and I hate it, but the look on the customers face when they can get back in their car is priceless.

whstl 22d ago
If you can't see craft in programming, then you're most certainly fully replaceable by LLMs. And I mean fully. The "no, but you see, the important part is what I do!" replies get really tiresome after a while.
- calvinmorrison 21d ago
  probably, i can go work on cars instead.

pessimizer 22d ago

> "Some people like writing books. Other people wish they had written a book." Other people think that books are a communication tool that you use in order to communicate something, and that something is the thing that is actually important. They may suffer from writing a book, and be embarrassed that they've written a book. Enjoying the process is fine. It's a hobby, however, not a form of nobility, and enjoying it doesn't mean you're not terrible at it. If you think the book is the goal, you're lying to yourself. There are plenty of books, they're easy to get. If your goal is the reward that you receive from other people for the books itself i.e. if your goal is to create a valuable commodity, that's fine, too. But a goal in writing books could be to convince or to inform. It's literally the pretext for all communication. I always find it harrowing that having the goal when programming be to create a system that could enable people to accomplish some function, or could accomplish some function for people autonomously seems to be the farthest from people's mind. But it's literally the pretext. You have to be trying to do that or lying about trying to do that to even program at all. Making it a battle between whether the program that you're writing is a product/resume item or a fidget spinner abstracts away reality for a contest between ruthless capitalism and middle-class self-actualization. Greed and narcissism. If you actually want to accomplish something in the world (other than burnishing your self-image), AI is just a tool, not a threat to your identity.

Chris2048 22d ago
> books .. communicate something > convince or to inform. It's literally the pretext for all communication ok, so what does a dirty novel, or some other pulp fiction convince or inform you of?
- johnnyanmac 21d ago
  Sex is communication too. It speaks to whatever escapism you desire or taboo you want to happen before your eyes. You can call the popular "taken off my feet by the mysterious handsome Werewolf that will fight to the death for me" trite. But readers into that have a pretty clear message they want to receive.