Comment by Schnitz
20 hours ago
Because people that enjoy programming for programming's sake don't want an LLM to do the programming for them - isn't it obvious? It's just like with any other hobby, people who like car racing created rules that force you to drive yourself, even though they'd get faster lap times with electronic driver aids. People who enjoy grappling created rules that force you to grapple, even though striking could win a fight faster. People that enjoy chess don't allow you to bring a computer to the chess table. The list is endless and the people that enjoy programming will create rules that force you to program, why shouldn't they? It's their hobby.
Writing code without an LLM is akin to cooking a meal yourself, as opposed to something in between hiring a private chef and pulling a slot machine lever. When I cook a meal for myself or my loved ones, I become deeply familiar with the ingredients and the recipe. I am a good cook. Every decision, small and large, I make myself. Using feedback, I can tweak the components and the process. However, if I order food and call it my own creation, I’ll be speechless when my nut-allergic friend asks me if I used peanut oil or olive oil. And does it taste good? The end result is subjective, not binary, like your three similes. What if the food sucks? Must I now micromanage the chef? I don’t want to make them cook it again and again, hoping each time it’ll taste little more like how I want it to. I’d rather just cook it myself; I am a good cook, afterall.
This is actually a great analogy. And I think it works very well. Because what llms deliver is not the exquisite dish, the carefully crafted solution.
It’s just a solution that might scratch the itch but never fully blow you away. One time use software essentially.
If that is good or bad remains to be seen.
Well to me using an LLM is akin to using microwave for food, and programming is getting your hands dirty in the art of cooking. I used to do the latter but the pace is too much, so I'm forced to go for the former. I still miss the days where I can cook myself
This is a good analogy. Also I hate cooking; it feels like a chore and waste of time. Given the means, I prefer to have someone else do it for me so I can focus on more interesting things.
If the analogy is good, does it mean AI boosters hate programming, and feel like it's a chore and waste of time? Yet they keep calling themselves programmers.
I dislike cooking; I don't call myself a chef, nor go on cooking forums saying they're all idiots for churning butter as a hobby, and telling them they are luddite dinosaurs just because I bought myself an Instant Pot.
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LLMs are more like having someone else microwave something for you, rather than having someone else (who knows what they are doing) cook for you.
I don't see it the same way. I see it as akin to building a machine which can do the cooking for you. There is a lot of experimentation in terms of how you can construct that machine and how you can set it up, and for some people the payoff is in exactly this process.
> I see it as akin to building a machine which can do the cooking for you.
More like buying a microwave and frozen food. Unless you are actually training the LLMs.
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That's me. I've just moved the puzzle to figuring out the CC optimal "language" and mode of working with an LLM. At the same time, I haven't lost my love/expertise... Yet.
I explained it yesterday that it's no different than Linq powered by EF Core. You still need to understand the database and how SQL will work, or should. If you don't, you're queries will be slow and inefficient, hazardlessly oftentimes.
LLMs are an impressive abstraction, but they are not magic...yet. or maybe it is, but you still need to figure out the incantations. Not that I like to uptick and witchcraft, so I hate that analogy.
My boss tried to make me interested in agentic programming by showing me how "productive" the creator of OpenClaw is.
All I see is a fast food factory. Sure it's interesting that you can produce so much so quickly. But what is produced is endlessly uninteresting to me. It doesn't help that all the harness building is just SEO in disguise. Trial and error.
I don't doubt that agentic programming makes it possible to produce faster, but it also comes at a great cost for me, which is that I largely don't enjoy my job anymore. If I was given the choice between that and halving my salary I would have chosen the latter.
Yes. And (too) many people focus on the effort, or the LOC produced. Completely ignoring the value the thing produced actually brings.
This is true, but as usual nobody can agree on what "doing it yourself" means.
Few cars are manual steering, manual brakes, manual transmission.
Few grappling bodies go all Greek-naked.
Few chess bodies forbid researching previous games or your opponent.
The list is indeed endless, and every single person thinks they are using just the right amount of assistance; anything less is pointlessly difficult, anything more is cheating that takes the sport out.
Me, I've been a hobbyist programmer since youth (6502 assembly, represent). I'm having a blast "writing" software without touching a line of code. Sure, I'm old, and maybe I'm like those guys blasting Veyrons through highways, relying on traction control and all the computers to let me drive beyond my abilities. And... ok? I'm having fun, even if I'm not doing it right, by random anonymous peoples' views.
> I'm having a blast "writing" software without touching a line of code.
And that’s totally fine, enjoy your hobby however you enjoy it best. Most people programming by hand for fun don’t care that you program with an LLM for fun. The problems come when those two worlds collide, like in the linked GitHub issue, in chess engine leaderboards. In the long run for both groups to have their fun and friendly competition you’ll need two separate leaderboards. This is also very common in other hobbies. In racing there are car classes so that your Veyron and someone’s old Miata don’t go head to head. In combat sports there’s weight classes. Most sports separate amateurs and pros. Usually there is respect across the group boundaries and appreciation for the other groups deeply specialized skill. There’s even the concept of cross training to get better in your flavor of a sport. This will be figured out with programming as well.
Sure, I agree, and it’s already figured out. The demoscene has been around for decades. That’s real programming.
But I think you’re on to something important: framing programming as a competition of intrinsic skill where rules are necessary to equalize. That’s certainly true in some cases, and more power to those who enjoy it.
I guess I’m just more of a product guy these days, where the equalizer is the market and the consumers rather than the implementation methodology.
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> This is true, but as usual nobody can agree on what "doing it yourself" means.
Not everyone has to agree. Just everyone in a particular group at a particular time. Grappling competitions exist and so do MMA competitions, and both of them will expect you to follow their own rules.
One of the great things about hobbies is that you can enjoy them whatever way you want. But honestly is it not more accurate to say that you are now a hobbyist prompter, rather than a hobbyist programmer? I get the "its just a tool" mentality and I guess LLMs can be used that way, but if you are not touching a line of code yourself then it seems less analogous to using power steering and more analogous to just taking a taxi.
What I really don't understand how differently it seems that AI for programming and for anything else is treated.
I don't think there is insignificant group who would say that using LLM to write a book does not make you an author. Or make a song musician. Or draw a picture a painter or artist.
This just somewhat baffles me... Or maybe the LLM for programming people all believe that you are as much artist if you use AI in those fields and the product generates as such is as if not more valuable than one by more traditional means.
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Sure, I’m both a professional and hobbyist prompter. But then, that’s been true for decades, since I made the switch from engineering to product.
Only difference is I’m prompting LLMs rather than engineering teams. But honestly it’s not all that different, except that in the hobby flavor I can write specs that would take tens or hundreds of engineers to implement.
Maybe it all comes down to semantics: does “programming” mean typing in code, designing app architecture, or producing software? When I was young I was probably 75 / 5 / 20 between those. Now I’m 5 / 20 / 75. Maybe it merits a different word?
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But LLM usage isn’t equivalent to power steering, it’s what a full kitchen is to a microwave. You can sure put effort into a microwave meal but it’ll always work against you and much of the time you’re better off just picking up a pan.
Not to diminish your enjoyment, you’re completely entitled to it, I just think this is a bit of a false equivalence
An LLM is more akin to a staffed pro kitchen than a microwave.
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Fully agree with this. Also did lots of 6502 assembly, and also love doing agent-driven development. I also still like writing code manually and tweaking everything for myself, but those serve two different purposes.
Sometimes I'm having fun getting to the output I want and otherwise wouldn't have had time to. Sometimes I'm having fun exploring the code.
I don't care if someone don't see the value in one or the other of those, and to me they stand on equal footing as things I find both fun and valuable for different reasons.
> anything less is pointlessly difficult, anything more is cheating that takes the sport out.
https://c2.com/cgi/wiki?BlubParadox
> Few cars are manual steering, manual brakes, manual transmission.
Tell me you are not in European or African continent without telling me.
In Europe you would be hard pressed to find a car without power steering or assisted brakes.
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I'm in Central Europe and there aren't many manual transmissions around anymore where I am. But if you paint with a brush of two entire continents, you might paint a little too broadly.
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My 21 year old car in the uk has power steering, and it was low end when new
Yeah exactly. My go-to example is that if you enjoy playing guitar, you're not going to stop doing it because Suno exists now.
In addition, say if you had like a guitar-playing forum, where people share recordings of their practice. People would likely not appreciate it to share AI-generated audio of guitar-practicing there, either.
And while there are various reasons for a guitar forum that might not hold for a programming forum, one of them remains: There's nothing to talk about when it's AI-generated. What scale did you use and how did you tune it? "I dunno, AI did it"
All you can talk about is to say "oh cool that's cool that the algorithm machine you're paying subscription to access made you that thing, nice"
Or for example, even when a friend of mine vibe-coded a "synthesizer" app and he wanted to show me cause he knows I like that kind of thing. And I do, I love digging into and experimenting with DSP algorithms, but also the user interfaces and all sorts of things digital audio related. And I love talking about it, or explaining stuff. But my friend couldn't tell me anything (not even that it was using WebAudio, but also how). Anyway it made me a bit sad, and I felt like something is lost here. Something worthwhile. And I explained it to him that then all I could really say was "oh cool that's cool that the algorithm machine made you that thing, nice", and we talked it over, and it was alright. But still, it seems something is lost.
I used to write code all day, solving maths and logic problems which is what my brain loves to do, and so I loved my job.
Now I talk to a robot all day, trying to figure out how best to tell it whats in my brain. I no longer do maths and logic and instead I think about language and questions all day, holding in depth conversations and thinking up responses. This is something my brain naturally doesnt like to do and so I fatigue quickly in the day compared to my old job.
I want to do maths and logic again :(
I enjoy programming a lot, but still made the transition to using AI for my programming. It is a new tool that makes me much more efficient, I finally could continue working on my many open source projects that I couldn't touch for many years due to lack of time. My productivity is up, I'm pretty sure the code quality has improved, and I'm learning more than ever before; just in a different way.
for me its that software, wrought by hand is "bespoke". Yes, there is a loooooot of software that is just commercial, quickly vomited by hands that are just in it for the money. On the other hand there are open source projects who might have a miss guided design philosophy (Darktable comes to mind) but are otherwise build from people that care. There was an "artisan" at work, someone who cared.
When I see all those "show HN" projects that are slot level code it feels like they dont care about the result that much and just want to showcase their idea in a more tactile way, but there is no actual proper execution to make the thought into matter so to speak
True, but it sounded a bit paradoxical to me that the people who work on engines designed to beat humans at chess were themselves opposed to using engines that (arguably) beat humans at programming...
Exactly one of them threatens their lifestyle.
It can also be a personal preference for minimalism vs. maximalism. Or many other things.
Or Warhammer figurines painting, let’s buy them already painted
If you don't want to paint, and also don't want to pay somebody else to paint them, there's always various alternatives like printed out papercraft stands. Fold them, stick them on the base and you are ready to roll.
There's also a myriad of other creative ways to proxy your way out of the general costs (time, space and money) if you check out the term "poorhammer".
You can take already painted warhammer figurines, pose them, take a photo, prompt an AI to make that your first scene, and generate a hollywood level scene in about a minute or two.
Yes, sure, you can buy the figurine and get the joy of painting it. But there's new things you can do now too, things you couldn't dream about before.
But I'll grant you this, the AI coding extinction event is so severe that I do believe we need to support anyone trying to preserve any memory of it. Like, we need to build entire museums, one for each programming language.
> You can take already painted warhammer figurines, pose them, take a photo, prompt an AI to make that your first scene, and generate a hollywood level scene in about a minute or two.
if that's so awesome then why isn't everybody doing it?
I never dreamt about stuff like that, but are there actually people who are like "oh thank God I can finally make my AI movies with my figurines and other stuff I have laying around"
honestly you sound too enthusiastic about this, like Sam Altman "AI podcast about your kids" tier enthusiastic
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But would you blame the figurine painting community for not wanting that?
If you want to do AI movies, join the AI movie community.
The hobby programming community isn't about vibe coding, that's what the vibe coding community is for.
People programme for 2 reasons:
1. Some programme because it’s the one of 2 ways to get the things they want (another way is hiring a team to code for them). Now that they have vibe coding, they’d happily never touch a line of code again. 2. Other people programmes because they just enjoy it. Vibe coding ruins the best part for them. Like telling a foodie, "Good news! I built a robot to eat your food for you."
Most people getting paid to code are probably somewhere in the middle?
But nowadays hand-writing code at work is starting to feel kinda 'illegal'. The manager is gonna ping you just because you fall behind on the company's token waste leaderboard.
Maybe it's just another "hobby should never become job" story?
> Like telling a foodie, "Good news! I built a robot to eat your food for you."
Also like building a robot to cook food for you. Sure, it's fine for mass produced meals, but it won't replace a top-notch chef.
Hobby should only become job if you enjoy the craft of it and if the profession / job rewards craftsmanship.
People in it just for the money won't care about craft - you see the same thing in plumbing. And when there's enough money and scale on the line, craft becomes progressively more niche - that is why Ikea furniture is a thing. And you can even say that there is craft in Ikea, just not along the axes a traditional furniture maker or user would consider.
This is such a great point and raises existential career questions for everyone who got into a programming career because they love the craft. Either find your niche where craft will matter until you retire, leave the profession or accept that it’s now mostly about prompting. It’s almost like everyone’s being promoted into management or tech leading and can’t refuse…
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"Because people that enjoy programming for programming's sake don't want an LLM to do the programming for them - isn't it obvious? "
How do we filter out these people during an interview?
why would you want to filter these people out? surely those that consider programming more than just a "means to an end" are going to be much more valuable employees, consider they are much more likely to be skilled at their craft? im genuinely interested in why you'd want to filter these people out!
I want to find people who have already had all their passions and emotions stamped out by the endless grind already, so that they will tell an AI to do what I tell them for 996 without complaint. These people who "care" about things just get in the way and want time off and such.
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Offer low pay and start using lines of code as a metric. Not only will you not hire such people, you'll also filter out any who might already be on your team!
(Assuming "these people" is a euphemism for "skilled engineers")
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