Comment by ori_b

4 hours ago

So why would you buy it off of Anthropic?

In any activity you can take shortcuts that makes it easier. It's up to you how many (if any) you want.

Take woodworking for example. When I build a kitchen cabinet, I can get lumber that's already smooth and treated, I can buy drawer tracks, I can use power tools instead of a handsaw and a screwdriver, I can use a pocket hole jig to make joints easier. I still have to do more planning and assembling than with the Ikea cabinet, which also takes more work than having a contractor do everything for me.

I'm doing it my way because it's fun for me. Other people might enjoy other parts of the process - or different things altogether.

There's a whole spectrum between doing everything from scratch and paying someone to have it done for you.

I don't understand the question. For one thing I use local models mainly, but even if I didn't, I'd be buying the tokens from cloud model providers, not the prepackaged, fully complete software itself. I buy the tokens to make what I want.

It's actually quite similar to buying the services of a programmer off Upwork to build something for me, only with LLMs it's way cheaper and faster, with a shorter feedback loop.

  • I think their point is that you aren't really doing the implementing, Claude (or any model really) is. If you genuinely find prompting LLMs to be fun, then by all means go for it.

Interesting that you think building is just coding.

What do you think architects do? Or interior designers? Or civil engineers?

  • Interesting that you think coding is writing down code. Code is just a language where the problem is specified in fine detail; the biggest value proposition of an LLM is being able to hand-wave and let some other tool take care of guessing at detail, where you can't be bothered to specify it in full.

    Architecture certainly isn't building, and neither is interior design. Civil engineers calculate and specify the loads in excruciating detail, because if they didn't, people would die.