Thread

1. QuantumNoodle · 1785956641 · focus · HN ↗

   A hobby is something you enjoy the process of doing, not just the end result. Everybody likes a clean home, but cleaning is rarely a hobby. LLMs expedite achieving the end result. Take from that what you will.

   1. MostlyStable · 1785956964 · focus · HN ↗

      Exactly. I have a backyard garden not because I need the food (it would be infinitely cheaper and easier to buy even high end farm-stand vegetables), but because I enjoy gardening. Buying a gardening robot (if such a thing existed) would completely defeat the point.

      I use an LLM to make custom software for myself not because I enjoy coding but because I want software that I can't afford to hire a human to make for me. Buying a robot to do it (current agentic coding LLMs) is the only way it gets done at all.

      These two things are not the same, and should not be viewed in the same light.

      All that being said, I would 100% buy a weeding robot. Weeding sucks.

      1. jmaw · 1785957185 · focus · HN ↗

         These are not completely different things, but maybe different sides of the same coin.

         You enjoy the act of gardening, so you do not automate it away.

         You enjoy the clean home, not the act of cleaning, so you may be interested in automating it away.

         It seems you enjoy designing or using software, as opposed to programming/building software. So you automate the programming/building away.

         1. MostlyStable · 1785957318 · focus · HN ↗

            Sure, that's fair. I enjoy the process of figuring out ways software can solve some (usually quite trivial) problem for myself, but then I'm very happy to hand the act of making it to a robot.
      2. bee_rider · 1785957901 · focus · HN ↗

         How much of coding is weeding?

         1. _superposition_ · 1785958847 · focus · HN ↗

            Probably a similar ratio!

            1. jmaw · 1785964140 · focus · HN ↗

               How much of gardening is dealing with bugs?

               1. dmoy · 1785965603 · focus · HN ↗

                  It depends what on what you're growing.

                  With roses, a significant % of manual time is spent fighting aphids

      3. Aurornis · 1785958808 · focus · HN ↗

         > Buying a gardening robot (if such a thing existed) would completely defeat the point.

         Unless your hobby is backyard robotic gardening.

         Which is my way of saying that people have different reasons for enjoying a hobby.

         Like most hobby debates, this one comes down to "Let people enjoy things"

         1. cindyllm · 1785964300 · focus · HN ↗

            [dead]

      4. enraged_camel · 1785965578 · focus · HN ↗

         >> I have a backyard garden not because I need the food (it would be infinitely cheaper and easier to buy even high end farm-stand vegetables)

         ...cheaper how? My partner and I grow most of our veggies and, based on our calculations (including fixed costs that have gone into the garden, as well as e.g. water, fertilizer, etc.) we save a non-negligible amount of money every month.

         1. [deleted] · 1785971367 · focus · HN ↗

            [deleted]

         2. ac29 · 1785989871 · focus · HN ↗

            One can piss away a lot of money gardening with little to show for it, especially if you buy bagged soil. Buy a raised planter, some soil, some fertilizer, some seedlings, a couple garden tools and you can easily be in for $150+ which is definitely more than you'll get out of a season worth of growth even if nothing fails.

            On the other end of the spectrum, if you grow in fertile native soil from seed your costs can be close to zero

      5. _carbyau_ · 1785986685 · focus · HN ↗

         > Buying a robot to do it

         It depends what you value. There's "zoning out going through the motions" for mindfulness and then there's "building stuff!" for interest, learning and fun.

         And you can have any combination of the two. Like maybe doing the same planting routine but with different details for a different plant or experimenting if a new layout works better.

         I don't care to do the labour of gardening. But if I had time, I'd spend it bikeshedding optimisations. IE what about grow lights? Is it worth having a greenhouse in my climate? etc etc. And all the little details about building stuff.

         Aside: I too want a robot. One for lawn mowing (they exist but expensive) and one for spraying the little lawn weeds that pop up.

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