Comment by dleslie
9 hours ago
I have friends that enjoy knitting and sewing. Those are great pastimes made commercially unviable for most because of great leaps in logistics and automation. But they are absolutely valid and enjoyable hobbies.
And the skills they provide are transferable. Patience, attention to detail, staying on task.
It's just tough to hear a mainstream "impactful" line of work be compared to knitting and sewing. Say what you want but people thought that their work was necessary to the advancement of society, or at least something bigger than themselves. Whether you agree with them or not, reduction of the job to a hobby takes that away from them.
I feel like this belittles knitters and sewers!
There's also a tension in your comment. Are we prioritizing "advancing society" or programmer feelings? If it's the former, then it doesn't matter if AI is better than humans, whatever moves us forward faster is better. If it's the latter, then we're talking about holding back progress for the sake of a programmer's feelings.
For the record, I'm a lifelong programmer who loves AI because now I can experiment with new ideas at a scale I could not before. I feel zero loss. In fact using AI brings back the magic of technology that we lost in the 90s with the "business-ifying" of tech.
I'm just saying that before programmer feelings used to be loosely aligned with advancing society: fun work (for some people) was useful work. Now that's starting to be decoupled and it sucks when your choices are hate your job and contribute or do fun stuff and don't contribute. Granted this is the dilemma most people have faced, but for people who like their work as it is right now it sucks.
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I find this comment fascinating for a few reasons. The first is that it has the underlying assumption that all "progress" is good (regardless of what we're progressing towards). From my perspective, it seems like most of the progress being made is towards bringing about a sort of techno-feudalism and environmental collapse. Maybe a little bit less progress would actually benefit humanity?
The second thing revolves around this:
> In fact using AI brings back the magic of technology that we lost in the 90s with the "business-ifying" of tech.
This is the complete opposite of my experience. AI seems like the logical conclusion of the business-ifying of tech. Get rid of all those pesky nerds, and the MBAs can just create whatever grift pops into their head.
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Sewing had been a relevant skill for 10s of thousands of years. Programming has been relevant for 10s of years.
ok and? both are allowed to suck? most people have lived for 10s of years not 10s of thousands of years so it's not like that "ancestral memory" matters anyways.
interstingly i think what you are talking about is pretty apt, but not the way you are framing it. knitting and sewing were impactful things in their time; clothing has been something humans need for a long time and more skilled craftsmen were able to produce hgiher quality garments. new techniques increased durability, wearability, comfort, etc. machines commoditized that and made it mich faster to produce garments, so turned these into hobbies and the odd artisan fpcused and made new improvements, but not as often as before.
programming will likely be the same. fewer people who care to be craftsmen, more hobbyist, a few artisans who really dig deep and make new patterns (we still dont see AI sampling out of distribution).
>reduction of the job to a hobby takes that away from them.
this is your personal feeling. they never had anything in the first place, just that the market was valuing a certain skill for what it could output. the perspective you are posting is purely a construct.
Sure it is a construct (it's how I feel at least).
I didn't mean to say sewing and knitting weren't impactful - on the contrary, they are analogous to programming: they were impactful but now they're basically hobbies. Maybe there are more developments left in the clothing making process - not sure.
I think you're undervaluing the skill and technology behind clothing, as well as the impact of clothing. But that's probably a reflection of how technology has allowed us to take it for granted.
for sure but the point is that sewing isn't really necessary anymore. if all the knitters disappeared tomorrow, the majority of society wouldn't feel it . If (say a few years ago) all SWEs disappeared, that would be a problem for a lot of people. The feeling of impactfulness is gone when things are reduced to a hobby.
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>impactful
Programming is the art of automation, and is being taken to new levels. It'd be quite damming to the field if a substantial % of the world's output over many decade hadn't brought us here, tbh.
Were builders crying when the Hagia Sophia was built? Projects come and go, nothing is forever.
it's like how I can still get a typewriter and use it for the experience, or like how I could write ORM scaffolding by hand or just let the code gen write it, I see AI as nothing more than a keyboard extension, the amount of freedom you give it depends on the instruction/prompt
At that point it’s probably worth taking a more mainstream hobby like music or dancing, you’ll have a much bigger community of passionate folks. I suspect that will happen to programmers as a hobby folks too, they might discover they like playing music instruments instead.
Actually laughed out loud at the idea of a bunch of stereotypical programmers going to a dance class
Richard Stallman, one of the most stereotypical of programmers, was fond of Bulgarian folk dance.
The new learn to code haha! I personally find dancing to be the hardest of public hobbies to even think about doing, guess I'm too shy
Not to mention your friends still enjoy receiving custom made knitted stuff as presents, or your neighbors if you see someone struggling. Or donate it somewhere, or put it in a display shelf to be reminded what you can actually do. Maybe in the future, programs and custom made hardware might be the same :)
> Maybe in the future, programs and custom made hardware might be the same :)
One step closer to the matrix. Send the white rabbit over, I've got your floppies ready to go. No ai, and developed without an active internet connection, so you can listen to music safe in the knowledge that your music isn't listening to you.