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Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

391 points · 454 comments · lladnar

  1. QuantumNoodle · · 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 · · 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. bee_rider · · focus · HN ↗
        How much of coding is weeding?
        1. _superposition_ · · focus · HN ↗
          Probably a similar ratio!
          1. jmaw · · focus · HN ↗
            How much of gardening is dealing with bugs?
            1. dmoy · · focus · HN ↗
              It depends what on what you're growing.

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

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