Comment by llama_drama
19 hours ago
There's this joke like "I used to have 5 unfinished side projects, but AI changed everything. Now I have 30 unfinished side projects". And in my case it's not even a joke
19 hours ago
There's this joke like "I used to have 5 unfinished side projects, but AI changed everything. Now I have 30 unfinished side projects". And in my case it's not even a joke
Well ai made it extremely easy to finish things. Projects are usually left unfinished because the last mile is filled with boring and tedious tasks we do not like to do. AI loves those tasks. I have finished everything I bothered to, most of the time I still wrote stuff by hand, the AI just fixed tests for me (usually OS specific stuff that I can’t test locally which is a pain), told me what I was doing wrong so it was trivial for me to fix it, and checked my documentation which invariably got out of date.
I've definitely found that while "AI makes getting from 0-80 done much easier than the 80-100" holds true, it is much easier to get my work to a quality bar that I'm excited to share with my peers...
There's still a lot of effort required to move something from "good idea, loads to do" to "really finished and really works and I've proved it".
But its a lot less effort that when we didn't have LLM's.
Interestingly it does seem that it's still enough effort to prevent most folks from making that step though.
So relatable. But I have some finished projects now and some of them I use daily.
The definition of "finished" has changed for me also.
More and more, I am using half finished as a polished product, but pragmatically very useful software I have built myself.
More importantly, I see no reason to polish this into a product. It is more useful in this half finished, easily moldable state.
Like it use to make sense to bake the clay and sell the hardened output but now I want to keep the soft clay so it can be molded to my changing needs. I keep adding to a collection of these moldable states.
Can't really blame AI for that though.
They aren't blaming AI, they are just backing up the "not much has changed" idea.
It's always been easier to start a project than finish it, and LLMs make starting a project roughly free. I'm not sure they change how much work it is to finish it all that much.
I mean, I have finished more side projects than before. So they do change it. Just not as dramatically.
Of course you can. LLMs take you from 0 to 80 instantly. They are then completely incapable of getting from 80 to 100 and making something worth shipping to production. They are the ultimate unfinished side project generator.
Have you, uh, used them recently? LLMs absolutely get to 100 now.
16 replies →
Skill issue. I had 30 unfinished side projects even before AI. Just raw talent.
No idea what you're talking about. I'm using AI to help me on my paperclip production side project, and it's going great!