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It is fun to imagine what we could have built on those old machines with these new coding agents! But it is kind of hollow isn't it. It's the difference betwee

It is fun to imagine what we could have built on those old machines with these new coding agents! But it is kind of hollow isn't it. It's the difference between building a table yourself and telling someone else to build a table for you. If you've never done anything for yourself, usually with your own hands, you don't understand the pleasure and satisfaction that comes from doing it. And since "AI" isn't human, it can't know that feeling, either.

kejdjejxjejdj 7d ago
> If you've never done anything for yourself, usually with your own hands, you don't understand the pleasure and satisfaction that comes from doing it. That’s an absurd thing to say. Doesn’t matter what “AI” feels or doesn’t feel. AI is a tool. You can derive as much pleasure from having an ideia, planning it, working on it from a higher level, and seeing it come to life as you do when you get down and dirty with it and do it from the low level up. Let’s talk like adults here. Please.
- MobiusHorizons 7d ago
  You are arguing against a very well known phenomenon. Technical people often avoid getting promoted to management precisely because they love doing the thing themselves. Despite the higher potential for impact in a management position, losing the detailed view of a practitioner is a real loss. This phenomenon is less obvious in big tech because there are so many people who really wanted to be managers the whole time, but had to be engineers first or never really cared about the work, but want a promotion for the better pay.
  - kejdjejxjejdj 7d ago
    You either replied to the wrong comment or didn’t and proved my point exactly: some people like the technical low level approach, others prefer the higher level architectural work. There’s space for both and there’s a need for both.
- reaperducer 6d ago
  That’s an absurd thing to say. It's not absurd if you've actually done these things. I can only conclude from your response that you have not, so you don't know what it's like, therefore you don't know what the rest of us talking about.
  - kejdjejxjejdj 6d ago
    > I can only conclude Well, given that you are selfishly and arrogantly trying to set universal boundaries on what constitutes labour and effort, and what qualifies as “work” based on your feelings alone, then it seems fairly on brand for you to go about assuming things about people you don’t know from atom. So you do you. Go have fun bringing other people’s work down so you can feel better about yourself.
Someone 7d ago
Designing a table and letting somebody else build it can be enjoyable, too. There are plenty of people enjoying designing, for example people who 3D print objects they design, or people designing PCBs or even entire gadgets but outsourcing production. With LLMs, I guess a factor is how much direction you give the machine. “Build me a graphical desktop” likely isn’t very enjoyable, but I can see co-working with a LLM being enjoyable. Examples - think of some novel UI interaction, and let the LLM code it - spending hours to speed up the GUI or to make it use less memory
- alt227 7d ago
  This. Knowing your limitations of building, but being good at designing and watching somebody/something else realise your vision is incredibly satisfying. I see it like 3D printing. Nobody can extrude molten plastic out of their bodies to make things, but the skill of designing the construction well and then watch the machine execute it is certainly a good feeling. I dont really see how this is different to designing some software verbally and prompting an ai to build it for you.
  - varjag 7d ago
    If you don't know how the artefact you ordered works you haven't built it in any meaningful sense of the word.
- flohofwoe 6d ago
  INHO the only unsatisfactory part for this "explorative" work is that you never really get into the flow since the LLM just takes too long between interactions (sometimes minutes). That's long enough to prevent from getting into the flow, but not long enough to focus on something else in the meantime.
alt227 7d ago
I have coded big projects manually for a long time. Being able to get ai to do it, then step back and marvel at knowing how much work that would have taken manually is very satisfying.
leidenfrost 7d ago
You can say the same for building computers. You didn't actually "built" a computer from the ground up. You just bought the pre-made hardware and plugged it in the places that are made to be easily pluggable. Everything in tech is about standing in the shoulders of what came before.
- flohofwoe 6d ago
  At least when plugging a computer together I know who built the components. When building with LLMs I have no idea who actually wrote the code snippets that are thrown into the mixer ;)

kejdjejxjejdj 7d ago

> If you've never done anything for yourself, usually with your own hands, you don't understand the pleasure and satisfaction that comes from doing it. That’s an absurd thing to say. Doesn’t matter what “AI” feels or doesn’t feel. AI is a tool. You can derive as much pleasure from having an ideia, planning it, working on it from a higher level, and seeing it come to life as you do when you get down and dirty with it and do it from the low level up. Let’s talk like adults here. Please.

MobiusHorizons 7d ago
You are arguing against a very well known phenomenon. Technical people often avoid getting promoted to management precisely because they love doing the thing themselves. Despite the higher potential for impact in a management position, losing the detailed view of a practitioner is a real loss. This phenomenon is less obvious in big tech because there are so many people who really wanted to be managers the whole time, but had to be engineers first or never really cared about the work, but want a promotion for the better pay.
- kejdjejxjejdj 7d ago
  You either replied to the wrong comment or didn’t and proved my point exactly: some people like the technical low level approach, others prefer the higher level architectural work. There’s space for both and there’s a need for both.
reaperducer 6d ago
That’s an absurd thing to say. It's not absurd if you've actually done these things. I can only conclude from your response that you have not, so you don't know what it's like, therefore you don't know what the rest of us talking about.
- kejdjejxjejdj 6d ago
  > I can only conclude Well, given that you are selfishly and arrogantly trying to set universal boundaries on what constitutes labour and effort, and what qualifies as “work” based on your feelings alone, then it seems fairly on brand for you to go about assuming things about people you don’t know from atom. So you do you. Go have fun bringing other people’s work down so you can feel better about yourself.

Someone 7d ago

Designing a table and letting somebody else build it can be enjoyable, too. There are plenty of people enjoying designing, for example people who 3D print objects they design, or people designing PCBs or even entire gadgets but outsourcing production. With LLMs, I guess a factor is how much direction you give the machine. “Build me a graphical desktop” likely isn’t very enjoyable, but I can see co-working with a LLM being enjoyable. Examples - think of some novel UI interaction, and let the LLM code it - spending hours to speed up the GUI or to make it use less memory

alt227 7d ago
This. Knowing your limitations of building, but being good at designing and watching somebody/something else realise your vision is incredibly satisfying. I see it like 3D printing. Nobody can extrude molten plastic out of their bodies to make things, but the skill of designing the construction well and then watch the machine execute it is certainly a good feeling. I dont really see how this is different to designing some software verbally and prompting an ai to build it for you.
- varjag 7d ago
  If you don't know how the artefact you ordered works you haven't built it in any meaningful sense of the word.
flohofwoe 6d ago
INHO the only unsatisfactory part for this "explorative" work is that you never really get into the flow since the LLM just takes too long between interactions (sometimes minutes). That's long enough to prevent from getting into the flow, but not long enough to focus on something else in the meantime.

alt227 7d ago

I have coded big projects manually for a long time. Being able to get ai to do it, then step back and marvel at knowing how much work that would have taken manually is very satisfying.

leidenfrost 7d ago

You can say the same for building computers. You didn't actually "built" a computer from the ground up. You just bought the pre-made hardware and plugged it in the places that are made to be easily pluggable. Everything in tech is about standing in the shoulders of what came before.

flohofwoe 6d ago
At least when plugging a computer together I know who built the components. When building with LLMs I have no idea who actually wrote the code snippets that are thrown into the mixer ;)