Thread

1. alkonaut · 1785999287 · focus · HN ↗

   Programming has five phases effectively:

   1) You figure out what problem to solve.

   2) You figure out HOW to solve the problem.

   3) You actually implement the solution.

   4) You see the solution work, for yourself.

   5) You ship/deploy/publish the program. This means you see people be happy users and/or you get paid for it and so on.

   If you're an entrepreneur type, you probably enjoy the first and last steps most, and you see steps 2-4 as mostly a chore. If you're a tinkerer, you don't care much for 1 and 5, and you see 2-4 as the whole point of programming. I'm a tinkerer. I'd be happy to just write code and throw it away. Coding is like solving sudokus. I could skip steps 1 and 5 forever. I don't ever need to show any code to anyone. In fact, most of the time when programming I do steps 2 and 3 and even skip 4. I don't even finish! I work weeks on something until I lose interest, and I know that in order to even run it, it would be several more weeks. A PoC is enough. Or just a half one. It's just code-to-structure-thoughts, not to create anything finished.

   The 5 phases look kind of symmetric. The outermost layer (1 and 5) are the entrepreneurial steps. If you're a product owner or CEO, you might work strictly at steps 1,5. Then steps 2-4 are the managerial/architectural steps. If you're a very senior IC at a large company, you might work at this level, without actually doing much coding. Only the inner most step (3) is the manual creation of source code. Even though it's 5 different phases, it's just "3 layers" of programming.

   The problem as I see it is that I enjoy step 3. And LLMs are good at step 3 almost exclusively. So they just pick the best bit of this dish, and leave me with the rest.

   If you're an entrepreneurial type, the LLM appears to take the _worst_ bit of the work from you. Great.

   1. shiomiru · 1786005924 · focus · HN ↗

      There's also the economic problem that programmers had until recently been highly regarded because steps 2-3 were hard. "Open source" solved this partially by utilizing the labor such (relatively) well-paid people gave away "for the love of it", but it was not nearly enough to put most out of work.

      Now there is a plagiarism machine built on top of decades of this work that seemingly solves 3 and promises to solve 2 (badly, but usually this matters little), the programmers that (indirectly) helped build it are told they're fools for doing so, and threatened by losing their status if they don't adapt to the "entrepreneurial way" (well, the full promise is "you'll lose it anyway, but if you cooperate in stuffing sama's pockets then maybe you get to keep it a bit longer").

      So what really surprises me is not that people are upset but that so few are.

      1. waffletower · 1786032792 · focus · HN ↗

         It sickens me when people use the word plagiarism to describe LLMs. Particularly when they use words and language that they themselves have plagiarized -- words like "love" and "economic" -- where do you draw the line? No, we haven't figured out how to fairly compensate everyone -- the frontiers aren't even trying. Spotify does at least try in their domain (and fails badly). Regardless of how the entitled get paid, the plagiarism label isn't fair and is diametrically opposed to Fair Use. Fair Use allows the commons to build on its history. Those against are typically parroting IP conglomerate conservatism and localized greed. I see immense benefit from the distillation of all available knowledge with an LLM interface. A recent article posted here says it perfectly "AI rewards expertise". I see vast benefits -- am willing to pay a significant monthly fee -- and sense that many are simply blind to and inarticulate about the growing force multiplier potential of modern AI.

         1. overgard · 1786048198 · focus · HN ↗

            So, I think this issue is a lot more obvious in image generation than it is in code or writing (but the implicit problem is the same). You can ask an image model to generate images in the style of an artist, that it's been trained on, without permission, and with a lot of these artists intentionally trying to poison the data and leaving every hint to the scrapers to fuck off. It takes a lot of work to develop a unique style that people love, and it's ugly as hell that a bunch of sloppers just plagiarize it. It's different when a person does it. Sure, you can & should practice on other people's styles, but ultimately in the process you find your own. GenAI doesn't do that, it just.. steals and copies. So yeah, it might make you sick, but it also is a plagiarism machine. The thing you should feel sick about is the plagiarism, not the description.

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