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

400 points · 471 comments · lladnar

  1. robalni · · focus · HN ↗
    I think another reason to write code by hand is that you want to know what you get. If you have an idea, then you can implement it better than an LLM, just like you can implement it better than another person, because you are the only one who understands what you mean exactly. Details are always lost and misunderstood in communication; this is a weakness of LLMs.

    Similarly, even if I don't write the code but I let someone else who I trust do it for me, there is value for me in that person not using LLMs, because only if they don't, I can know that the only spirit that lives in the code is of the person of my choice. It's like a social thing; I can know and trust a human, but I'm not sure I can do that with an LLM.

    It's similar to how you wouldn't want to use LLMs in politics: the whole point of expressing your ideas is that they are your ideas and if you let someone (or something) else do it for you, details will be missed and misunderstood.

    So this is one reason that I think hobby communities don't like LLMs; they care too much about what they build.

    1. truncate · · focus · HN ↗
      Depending what you are making; coding slows you down and think as you build stuff step by step. Its kind of like speaking vs writing. Generating code through LLM for me is like talking -- I love talking, but when I write something down, I'm more structured, think more about things etc etc.

      People say, if you you write elaborate well spec'ed prompts, it will do the right thing. Coding in a way is doing that.

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