Hacker News Reader

Comment by ricardobeat | Hacker News Reader

I have a hard time understanding that position when it comes to programming. What is "human" about typing instructions for the computer into a terminal? Was perforating paper more human? And I say this as a programmer with 20 years of experience. The human part is the thinking and intention behind it, not the typing.

When it comes to generative art, yes, that's a much more significant issue.

View on HN

Not OP, but all the choices made along the way are the human part. The understanding and creativity to solve the complex challenges that arise in an efficient way that fits into the structure of the greater program.

Programming never has had one right way to accomplish a task, and that is disappearing with agents. Why would pick Ruby for a project because it’s nice for the programmer, when the agent is the one coding? In fact, Why would anyone ask an LLM to write a new program in almost anything other than JavaScript and Rust?

Have you ever solved a problem with code? If you have, you will know why it hurts so bad to lose that ah-ha moment at that level. It's something special spending a long time on something, learning as you do it. I do understand you can get this through possibly an LLM, just different. Take a mathematician spending years on a problem. Seeing a computer do it in a matter of a second or "11 days", is devastating in a way.

Yeah, I used to get a kick out of building a perfect, performant, keyboard-accessible, a11y compliant and well-designed dropdown menu. Building my own rendering libraries. Making things run at 60fps. Optimizing server code, HTTP performance. Watch a full fleet of servers running my code in action. It was great.

Now I get the same feeling out of building an entire component library in an afternoon, running my code in a Nintendo Wii with twenty minutes of effort, hacking a LED display that I bought for €5, writing a tool to update my keyboard that only supported Windows, or building projects that would take a team of twenty engineers in the past.

We just got a power upgrade, the magic is still there.

This reads like "I used to enjoy making a home cooked meal for my family, but now I can buy ten off doordash in the same time".

in the end it's just sad.

If we're going with cooking analogies - I really enjoy it, yet a good rice cooker was one of the best purchases I've ever made. That's a better parallel to me.

A rice cooker? Is this a joke? Making white rice takes 10 minutes with a pot. Very confusing.

I know right? Yet, what I said is true, and you can ask anyone who owns one for japanese/korean/chinese cooking. It reduces effort to near zero while giving 100% consistent results.

The point though, is that I don’t feel “sad” about not having controlled the temperature and time myself. It’s a tool.

I thought the same thing until I got a rice cooker. It makes cooking a little less stressful while you make the rest of your meal. I eat rice once every 1-2 weeks and I still love it.

Ah, yes, because just like a rice cooker, the work takes the same amount of time, it's just using less space on the stove, and is more reliable.

Wait, no, a rice cooker doesn't seem to fit.

Nobody is stopping you from home cooking however you want.

Working in a commercial kitchen however is a different matter. But there again, nobody is forcing you to use LLMs. Cook however you want.

> But there again, nobody is forcing you to use LLMs.

In the sense that I can quit my job at any time, sure. But my employer certainly requires LLM use, and even if I found another position that doesn't, I have no reason to believe that will last.

This is the commercial kitchen part of the analogy. Either you work in someone else kitchen based on their rules. Or start your own kitchen and you set the rules.

I am not denying the lack of freedom when working for someone else, or that it sucks when they impose rules on you. But that’s always been the way it goes.

The comment I replied to was about home projects and home cooking. Nothing there has to change.

You think of yourself as an engineer or an artist but in fact you are a bricklayer. ("You" as in "one"). Now, you are transitioning to an architect role, think of novel ideas. The AI is now the bricklayer. No?

Code can be art too. There are many ways to solve problems but finding this easy and elegant way which is just beautiful is marvelous.

Downgrading programming to typing instructions is like downgrading mathematics to writing characters.

This is not an issue.

Nobody cares about typing instructions. If someone can click instructions or voice them, it all the same.

Programming is about finding the right instructions. Not about typing.

assuming you yourself had programmed pre-LLM i completely fail to relate to your lived experience. what a devastatingly sad way of viewing the world

setting aside the craft and mastery or satisfaction in goal accomplishment: to me the main thing is a sense of actualization, of the codebase or thing you were working on being better because you were there.

have you ever put up a shelf? did it feel good after?

Putting a shelf up is not fun. Designing, building the shelf from scratch with my own vision feels way better ;). It's a lot more of a hassle but you will always look at it and be like I did that, heck you might have even learn a whole bunch doing that as well. It's easy to go to the store, buy something and assemble it (automation).

I think this perspective comes from assuming that the LLM is doing the thinking for you. And that is not the right approach IMO. The code is still mine - I chose how to write it, reviewed changes, suggested improvements, picked the architecture, directed refactoring and benchmarking efforts, tooling, scope of tests, and so on. It feels quite similar to being a project lead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com