Comment by peteforde
6 hours ago
I've got to be honest: my complete skepticism that the maker movement is somehow past tense makes it extremely difficult for me to take this tenuous comparison to LLM coding particularly seriously.
The author talks about lowered barriers to prototyping as though they represent a failure state; that's absurd, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether most people have membership-based maker spaces nearby.
Meanwhile, we're in a golden era of tool access. It's now possible for people to buy affordable CNCs, laser cutters and UV printers. I have a freaking pick and place in my home.
Also, you can have custom PCBs shipped to you in a week for about $10.
Having LLMs available at the same time as all of these tools are rapidly evolving means that anyone with an idea can prototype just about anything. In my worldview, anyone not excited about this either has no original ideas or a cynical agenda.
I'd say more but I have to get back to work on my maker projects.
I'm in the same camp.
I don't love that my career seems to be evaporating and perhaps no one will have a use for me soon, but, LLMs have made making even easier and more fun than ever. My sense of what I can take on has been amplified so much, it feels like a super power. Reverse engineering things used to be intimidating to take on, but now it feels like a couple afternoons of exploring with Claude. Understanding the scope of ideas is way more accessible, and often more constrained than it used to be.
I learn so much more than I used to, I get more done than I used to. I love it.
Hear, hear!
I am quite tired of skeptics and naysayers telling me that I'm only imagining learning, only imagining finishing projects, only imagining having more time for the fun parts.
I mean, I've expanded what I use my programming skills for dramatically in the last year. I've suddenly got several personal macOS apps I'm building and maintaining for myself, for my small business, or for fun. That never happened before (I've generally been full stack on the web). I've built far more useful and complex firmware and finally begun designing and building custom circuits. I rarely had the time for that before.
I'm able to take on way more interesting and challenging projects in my business because the logistics and legwork required for implementing them are greatly simplified by being able to actually implement the specs for the software I've had in my head for years.
This is a stark contrast to pre-2024 or so. I've always been an explorer, a fairly prolific software developer I guess, but now it's so much more than that. And it's leaking into hardware and other physical ventures. I'm typically limited by funds more than anything.
Are some of my projects lower quality than if they were done by someone more qualified? Yeah, totally. Though I think I still do a solid job. I don't care though; these things have opened my eyes and mind so much and made creating so much more inviting and exciting.
It still burns with the 'career careening into the dirt' vibes I get most days, but what the hell, it was good while it lasted. If I was smart enough to make the computer do the thing, maybe I'll be smart enough to do something else that's useful. And I've got some years left before it's truly end of the line, I think.
2 replies →
> It's now possible for people to buy affordable CNCs, laser cutters and UV printers.
And for the most part they just aren't
They just aren't affordable or they just aren't buying them?
Either way, I suppose the answer is relative and subjective and Bambu Lab would not agree with you.
People just aren't buying them. They're about as affordable as any other hobby AFAIK
1 reply →
> It's now possible for people to buy affordable CNCs, laser cutters and UV printers.
Do a lot of people do it? Maybe the answer is a tentative yes, given news like the recent case about guns and 3D printing.
I would put "you can make anything" -> "I will print guns!" strongly in the "no creative ideas" category.
Honestly, it's baffling that anyone would put real effort into printing guns when it seems as though some countries cough make it easy to pick one up at Walmart.
There are plenty of companies iterating on and selling these products so I assume yes, people are buying them.
> Maybe the answer is a tentative yes, given news like the recent case about guns and 3D printing.
In my observation these news lead to maker nerds "prepper-buying" (get such a machine before they become forbidden) quite a lot of such machines recently. :-)
I disagree with your framing cynicism as an "agenda". For the record, I agree that the maker movement hasn't actually ended, and most of your points are correct; however, the idea of LLMs teaching Electronics worries me about as much as people using LLMs to learn Chemistry.
A little while ago I had to dissuade someone from learning Chemistry via an LLM, because the advice that they had been given by the LLM would have very literally either blown up the glassware, throwing molten chemicals all over their clothing, or killed them when they tried to taste whatever they were trying to synthesize. There was no consideration of safety protocol, PPE, proper glassware, or correctly dealing with chemical reactions, and nary a mention of a fucking fume hood. NileRed and a few other chemistry youtubers have utterly woeful approaches to laboratory safety (NileRed specifically I have a chip on my shoulder about — I've seen him practice bad lab work on a number of occasions and violate many of the common safety practices from e.g. Vogel's), but even then they do still take precautions! Let it not be forgotten that safety practices are born through bloodshed. Now we have a whole new wave of people who are excited to learn, and that's great, but one stray hallucination will kill them. I'm sure that the LLM will be more than happy to write an "Oh I'm sorry, it's my bad that I forgot to tell you to double glove when handling organic mercury!" but by then it is too late.
The idea of someone learning, say, House DIY from an LLM and then sawing through the joists or rewiring their electronics is utterly terrifying to me, quite frankly. Likewise, the idea of someone following an LLM's instructions and then blowing themselves up in a shower of capacitors or chemical glassware is also utterly terrifying to me.
Yes, you could do all these things before. But at least the most commonly available learning materials to you were trustworthy and written by experts!
I guess we have to agree to disagree, because I am not particularly interested in chemistry and ChatGPT has been extraordinarily helpful in demystifying electronics. Having 24/7 access to a patient person who can unpack the difference between TTL and CMOS logic or when you'd choose a buffer instead of a Schmitt trigger without belittling you for not already knowing what they know is awesome and not going to get anyone even slightly killed.
What are you doing with TTL logic in 2026, out of curiosity?
(I’m not saying it’s not used, but the only thing I’d use TTL for is building old circuits out of the Forrest Mims books.)
1 reply →
Electronics can kill too. IIRC capacitors in CRTs are particularly deadly. Though I suppose someone using LLMs only as a first step, much like Wikipedia, is probably at much less risk than someone using it as their only source.
1 reply →
> Having 24/7 access to a patient person
It’s not a person. You understand that, right? I have to ask considering the amount of people who are “dating” and wanting to marry chatbots.
It’s a tool. There’s no reason to anthropomorphise it.
1 reply →
noooo we have to go back to stackoverflow to feel small.
> The idea of someone learning, say, House DIY from an LLM and then sawing through the joists or rewiring their electronics is utterly terrifying to me, quite frankly.
Can't wait for the load-bearing drywall recommendations coming from LLMs that were trained on years of Groverhaus content.