I've been part of open source for most of my life. This year, the projects I love started closing their doors to outside contributors, and I don't blame them one bit, but it makes me sad.
A personal look at how AI is changing open source as I've known it.
I’m not the parent poster, but I’ll give my stab at that question.
It’s because to some people (myself included, and I assume a lot of people on this website too) the process of discovery, of learning, of getting stuck, of despairing, of ahas, and of figuring shit out is the most amazing fun imaginable. After a hug from my loved ones, I scarcely know of a better feeling than having solved a hard problem (meaning a problem that was hard for me)! That’s why not!
In addition to being fun, we also find it useful (to anyone, also those who don’t find it fun) as a way of exercising one’s brain. As a researcher, I believe it’s also something that inherently drives people who seek out that profession.
Of course, everyone gets to pick their own fun. Lots of people seem to like singing and dancing, for instance. I don’t. But I understand enough about fun and inherent drive not to show up at a song retreat and ask “ugh, why do you guys even do this, skilled audio technicians can synthesize a much better voice than that!”
It’s because to some people (myself included, and I assume a lot of people on this website too) the process of discovery, of learning, of getting stuck, of despairing, of ahas, and of figuring shit out is the most amazing fun imaginable. After a hug from my loved ones, I scarcely know of a better feeling than having solved a hard problem (meaning a problem that was hard for me)! That’s why not!
Okay, and like I said, I do too. The problem is that I don’t like doing that for everything in my life. Some problems are not actually hard, they are simply tedious (to me!).
Honestly the implication that I don’t is kind of insulting!
Of course, everyone gets to pick their own fun. Lots of people seem to like singing and dancing, for instance. I don’t. But I understand enough about fun and inherent drive not to show up at a song retreat and ask “ugh, why do you guys even do this, skilled audio technicians can synthesize a much better voice than that!”
That is simply not what I’m doing at all. I made an app, for my self, that saved me time to get back to solving the difficult problems that I enjoy solving. That doesn’t meant that someone who enjoys working in that domain would not have a fun time working on that problem, it just means I don’t want to wait around for them to get my iPod working
Okay, and like I said, I do too. The problem is that I don’t like doing that for everything in my life. Some problems are not actually hard, they are simply tedious (to me!).
Of course. But lots of people who frequent this site do consider problems like
I saw that libgpod exists, so now I have to spend hours learning and writing a program
to be genuine fun! Again, nobody is saying that you have to share in our idea of fun. But you did ask why people would find LLMs “not awesome” (which is what you asked “why” to). And you got answers. Now you’re saying that those answers don’t apply to you. That’s fine. But they do apply to us who gave them!
I’m not saying they’re awesome. I’m agreeing with the grandparent that says they are:
awesome for end users
You can dislike LLMs because they suck the fun out of programming, but some people don’t like programming so it doesn’t make sense to dislike how other people use them to avoid that!
Even the most LLM-happy programmer I know is clear that you need to verify the LLM’s work. Does the end user who doesn’t like programming suffer through that verification? Or do they just use the output unchecked, which I assume you’d agree is not “awesome”?
The real line is not whether they can check the output. The real line is whether they can both understand and accept the error rate.
And there are not so few things where (a) «works 90% of the time, gives weird garbage the remaining 10% of the time» is useful if it is cheap enough, (b) getting to 90% does not take too many «Please fix this problem» promtps (with manual retesting of previous issues, as by assumption forcing the LLM to build a reliable regression test suite is outside the user’s qualification).
To borrow the example elsewhere from the conversation on this page — sometimes one needs to copy a playlist perfectly because this is the music for a carefully staged event; sometimes even a maliciously selected 90% out of a shuffled playlist is close enough for a morning run.
Have you seen anything Web done by a large corporation in the last 15 years? This is already how software looks like outside of the best-of-the-best command-line tools (so all software the user from the hypothetical uses is not much better).
I have, and it’s indeed almost always terrible. Every minute that I use Teams I curse the developers who made it and the management who approved it, and their lineage for 7 generations, and I wish the earth they’ve stood on salted!
In life in general I’d like more good stuff and less bad stuff. So a machine that lets most people push out the terrible quality you describe is a bad thing (not a bad thing in the sense “we should make it illegal and stop it”, but in the sense “we should all frown and admonish them, our human peers, sternly for using this shit”).
It’s like a temu factory in everyone’s pocket. Decidedly not “awesome”.
I don’t have a say in how other people use their computers, but that doesn’t disqualify me from making a judgement about whether I think what they’re doing is a good idea or not.
You yourself say what they do is “awesome”, so you’re clearly allowed an opinion. Are only positive ones acceptable?
I’m not the parent poster, but I’ll give my stab at that question.
It’s because to some people (myself included, and I assume a lot of people on this website too) the process of discovery, of learning, of getting stuck, of despairing, of ahas, and of figuring shit out is the most amazing fun imaginable. After a hug from my loved ones, I scarcely know of a better feeling than having solved a hard problem (meaning a problem that was hard for me)! That’s why not!
In addition to being fun, we also find it useful (to anyone, also those who don’t find it fun) as a way of exercising one’s brain. As a researcher, I believe it’s also something that inherently drives people who seek out that profession.
Of course, everyone gets to pick their own fun. Lots of people seem to like singing and dancing, for instance. I don’t. But I understand enough about fun and inherent drive not to show up at a song retreat and ask “ugh, why do you guys even do this, skilled audio technicians can synthesize a much better voice than that!”
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Okay, and like I said, I do too. The problem is that I don’t like doing that for everything in my life. Some problems are not actually hard, they are simply tedious (to me!).
Honestly the implication that I don’t is kind of insulting!
That is simply not what I’m doing at all. I made an app, for my self, that saved me time to get back to solving the difficult problems that I enjoy solving. That doesn’t meant that someone who enjoys working in that domain would not have a fun time working on that problem, it just means I don’t want to wait around for them to get my iPod working
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Of course. But lots of people who frequent this site do consider problems like
to be genuine fun! Again, nobody is saying that you have to share in our idea of fun. But you did ask why people would find LLMs “not awesome” (which is what you asked “why” to). And you got answers. Now you’re saying that those answers don’t apply to you. That’s fine. But they do apply to us who gave them!
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I’m not saying they’re awesome. I’m agreeing with the grandparent that says they are:
You can dislike LLMs because they suck the fun out of programming, but some people don’t like programming so it doesn’t make sense to dislike how other people use them to avoid that!
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Even the most LLM-happy programmer I know is clear that you need to verify the LLM’s work. Does the end user who doesn’t like programming suffer through that verification? Or do they just use the output unchecked, which I assume you’d agree is not “awesome”?
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The real line is not whether they can check the output. The real line is whether they can both understand and accept the error rate.
And there are not so few things where (a) «works 90% of the time, gives weird garbage the remaining 10% of the time» is useful if it is cheap enough, (b) getting to 90% does not take too many «Please fix this problem» promtps (with manual retesting of previous issues, as by assumption forcing the LLM to build a reliable regression test suite is outside the user’s qualification).
To borrow the example elsewhere from the conversation on this page — sometimes one needs to copy a playlist perfectly because this is the music for a carefully staged event; sometimes even a maliciously selected 90% out of a shuffled playlist is close enough for a morning run.
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This sounds like all the worst parts about the non-software world brought to the software world. Yuck!
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Have you seen anything Web done by a large corporation in the last 15 years? This is already how software looks like outside of the best-of-the-best command-line tools (so all software the user from the hypothetical uses is not much better).
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I have, and it’s indeed almost always terrible. Every minute that I use Teams I curse the developers who made it and the management who approved it, and their lineage for 7 generations, and I wish the earth they’ve stood on salted!
In life in general I’d like more good stuff and less bad stuff. So a machine that lets most people push out the terrible quality you describe is a bad thing (not a bad thing in the sense “we should make it illegal and stop it”, but in the sense “we should all frown and admonish them, our human peers, sternly for using this shit”).
It’s like a temu factory in everyone’s pocket. Decidedly not “awesome”.
God help us all.
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I can’t imagine anything I’d care about less as if it’s for their own personal use.
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Then we’re just very different people.
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Why do you care how people use their computers? And how does it have anything to do with your original argument that it takes the fun out of things?
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I don’t have a say in how other people use their computers, but that doesn’t disqualify me from making a judgement about whether I think what they’re doing is a good idea or not.
You yourself say what they do is “awesome”, so you’re clearly allowed an opinion. Are only positive ones acceptable?
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