Comment by sqeak
5 days ago
No pleasure really anymore, my hobbies were coding occasionally and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Recently I started rebuilding a custom d3d9 hook for an old game and it was really fun and I planned to release it to the community. But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
Do you not see a benefit in coding for the mental exercise and challenge?
Most hobbies are impractical... Machines can produce clothes much faster than a knitter, no chess player will beat the best computers, a boat can bring more fish to port in one trip than you can in a year, etc.
Actually much of the work to produce your clothes is done by hand because mechanizing it makes no economic sense when you can pay someone in Bangladesh next to nothing to do it. But regarding the other point, that has put people off things too -- Lee Sedol famously quit playing go after losing to Alpha Go, because he reasoned there was really no point when no matter how good he got he'd never beat the machine.
It takes a certail level of autism to be a coder because you enjoy it. Sadly many people went into this industry for the money and are now moving on because of AI. I say good riddance because when the AI bubble inevitably bursts, coding will be just us nerds again
> good riddance because when the AI bubble inevitably bursts, coding will be just us nerds again
Not sure what you mean by AI bubble bursting, but there is no way this genie goes back into the lamp. We now have Opus 4.6 level open models already and these are newer coming away, and soon we will have Fable level open models too. So even if all the frontier labs imploded financially today the LLMs are not going away.
Coding will never be the same as before, the sooner everyone accepts this the better.
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Try see if you can find some physical hobby that has nothing to do with computers.
Mine is gardening. With relatively little effort, I can grow a decent amount of foods, much of it interesting varieties that are not grown commercially anywhere. I really doubt that we're going to see affordable humanoid robots out-competing me in this hobby any time soon.
>Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
Then it's not really a hobby, no? Sounds more like a weird competition.
>But before I could, many many others had an LLM do the same thing and my work was obsolete in a moment. There went that hobby... so now I'm hunting a new one...
That sounds more like a job, at least with your perspective.
>I gain no joy from that, the joy I would have gained would be from other people using my work. Now they can produce my work without me entirely...
That's a job, man. Even if you're not getting paid money for it, you're not really doing it for yourself.
The point is a bit moot cause it's the same difference: you can get joy from a "job" and AI making that job obsolete sucks regardless. But if that's what you think a hobby is, then you don't have an actual hobby.
Go take up gardening.
We've thoroughly pathologized this aspect throughout history, but doing things that earn you societal status and respect from others is a essential for having a healthy psyche for many, possibly most people, men especially struggle when they don't have avenues to demonstrate skill and competence.
Doing things to share them with others is pretty normal in a hobby. You might be baking for friends and family or sewing clothes or whatever, and want to enjoy the recipients appreciation for it. If people don't accept your gifts, the satisfaction of it will go away, and the same is often true of small coding projects I think.
There is nothing wrong with admitting that a (small) part of a hobby is getting recognition from your peers.
I’m just happy that, for now, AI can hold a soldering iron or operate a multimeter.
As for gardening: the town where I grew up has these plots of land for vegetable gardens There’s a long waiting list to get one. You should see how the plot holders compete over who has the best vegetable beds.
I wish I could take up gardening but alas I live in an apartment like most other people... I suppose you got me, I have no hobbies and it's just another reason to not want to be here. :) Everything is work and not much fun, is it?
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If their hobby was contributing through code and now their contributions are worthless, they have lost a hobby.
This is a weird PoV - that a hobby is only a hobby if there is no community and you do it solo.
Sounds like you're saying tennis can't be a hobby. Nor videogames, nor making movies, writing stories, etc.
I mean, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic: hobbies via a community is still a hobby. There is no requirement that to qualify as a hobby it has to be completely audience-free.
>that a hobby is only a hobby if there is no community and you do it solo
Didn't say that.
>Sounds like you're saying tennis can't be a hobby. Nor videogames, nor making movies, writing stories, etc.
Nope, those are not conclusions you can draw from what I said.
>hobbies via a community is still a hobby
Yup, don't disagree with that.
>There is no requirement that to qualify as a hobby it has to be completely audience-free.
Never said that.
What I did say as that producing a product which is meant to be consumed by others and which offers you no joy if it isn't consumed isn't a hobby- it's a job. Money doesn't need to be exchanged for it to be a profit-seeking activity. And to be clear: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But what I am saying is that, fundamentally, AI can't make a proper hobby obsolete.
The OP is disheartened because his "hobby" is no longer relevant because AI can do his hobby better than him. Just take a step back and think about that: does it make any sense? Can you think of a reasonable example of a hobby where this dynamic can ever occur?
Like, AI has gotten pretty good at music. Does that mean everybody who was in a band for the fun of it all disbanded because AI can make music better than them? Of course not; they still enjoy making music. Now, a band who is trying to make money off of their efforts may be facing a different reality: if people are able to generate better music than what they can produce for way cheaper, then staying in a band for profit is a hard sell. But note that in both instances, these people (who are clearly operating within a community) are doing the same exact activity, but one set of people are doing it as a hobby while the other is doing it as a job.
And again, to be clear: I'm not saying the OP's feelings aren't valid. They wanted to produce something that others would find valuable, and AI made their efforts obsolete. That sucks, and they're clearly not alone. What I'm disagreeing with is the notion that that is a hobby. And that's an important distinction, because the OP is claiming they don't have a hobby anymore and I'm claiming they never did. They should have a hobby- a proper hobby- because it's important for humans to have hobbies for their own well being.
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Thank you for this post, enlightened being
Woefully out of touch and crass.
This is hideous.
It's not. At all.
If someone likes digging tunnels by hand, that's a hobby.
If someone is mad that tunneling companies make it hard for them to find "hand tunneling work", that's not a hobby. That's someone thinking their work is owed attention.
Go find a hobby that you like doing for yourself. Why do you think so many engineers turn to woodworking? It isn't because they think they're going to compete with Ikea.
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> and there's no point to it. Anything I write will be outdone in 2 seconds by someone else.
That's OK, you don't have to be the best at any one thing. The important thing about any hobby, be it programming, skateboarding, or playing the piano, is that you feel personal satisfaction in doing it, not in the reactions of people to your work. Your enjoyment of a hobby should never be based on whether or not people like it, or even whether or not they want to use the thing you created. If you feel that a project that you are working on could be summed up in a single prompt that can be given to an LLM, then your job is not to work on the project directly, but rather to find what makes what you are doing unique. It doesn't even have to be technically interesting or bring any new ideas to the table, just the fact that somebody has put in effort into making something (regardless of completion or quality) gives it value.
A hobby is something you do for yourself. Whether it's code, or painting, or woodworking.... you don't care if someone is better or faster than you. Unless you really see the hobby as a potential business, in which case you might want to reevaluate because with LLMs it's possible for an individual to do more by himself than ever before.
Well, some hobbies are fun because you're doing something no one else has done before, or which is challenging to accomplish without a lot of investment in time and growing in personal skill. A lot of hobbies are fun because of the competition and because you get to be at the forefront of something. It's fun because we're all limited in our time and energy and choosing to spend time on something means you can do things that someone else who doesn't spend time on it can't. That feels good.
People who were in the demoscene took joy in learning how to make a computer do things no one had done before and push the hardware to its limits. That's not as meaningful if someone can achieve the same thing by prompting an LLM.
A lot of hobbies are fun because of the human challenge in creating the output and knowing it was only achievable because someone had to take time to create it. Having an LLM accomplish the same thing absolutely devalues the fun in the hobby. Hobbies aren't 100% just about accomplishing something for yourself, even though if you sway to much into doing it for validation or to compete with others it can lead to burnout and lack of enjoyment.
I can lift weights on a barbell that are pretty good for a person my age, as a result of several years of regular training.
A person with a forklift can lift a lot more weight. Why does that change how I feel about what I can do unassisted?
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you weren’t competitive or pushing the limits of anything if llms arrived and suddenly you weren’t pushing the limits with it
You can do a hobby for any reason. It doesnt have to be for yourself. He could enjoy programming but also enjoy contributing to the wider open source community. So it makes sense to feel bad when he sees another project popup and invalidate his work. If it was another person who'd worked hard and thought about the project he could at least take solace in chatting about their solutions but with AI its nothing. It just solves the problem and there is little to be gained from it.
Many hobbies are collective endeavors or a way of providing something useful to other people.
Ah, well I do nothing for myself sir. I work most days of the week and time off is limited. My company doesn't really do vacations. I haven't had one in at least 3 years and hopefully I'll have the PTO soon but never the money!
That's silly. Why can't a hobby be something you want to show others and receive acknowledgement and validation from?
Maybe but any time you start depending on "validation" from other people you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Just be yourself.
Hey maybe publish it anyway. There are still some of us who are specifically looking for human-made things.