[BananaaRepublik]

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer...

This sounds like an alien trying and failing to describe why people like creating things. No, the typing of characters in a keyboard has no special meaning, neither does dragging a brush across a canvas or pulling thread through fabric. It's the primitive desire to create something by your own hands. Have people using AI magically lost all understanding of creativity or creation, everything has to be utilitarian and business?

[embedding-shape]

My entire point is that people are different. For some people (read through the other comments), it's quite literally about typing of characters, or dragging a brush across the canvas. Sure, that might not be the point for you, but my entire point of my comment is that just because it's "obviously because of X" for you, that doesn't mean it's like that for others.

Sometimes I like to make music because I have an idea of the final results, and I wanna hear it like that. Other times, I make music because I like the feeling of turning a knob, and striking keys at just the right moment, and it gives me a feeling of satisfaction. For others, they want to share an emotion via music. Does this mean someone of us are "making music for the wrong reasons"? I'd claim no.

[Izkata]

No, they're right. Your description is what you get from outsiders who don't understand what they're seeing.

In a creative process, when you really know your tools, you start being able to go from thought to result without really having to think about the tools. The most common example when it comes to computers would be touch-typing - when your muscle memory gets so good you don't think about the keyboard at all anymore, your hands "know" what to do to get your thoughts down. But for those of us with enough experience in the programming languages and editor/IDE we use, the same thing can happen - going from thought to code is nearly effortless, as is reading code, because we don't need to think about the layers in between anymore.

But this only works when those tools are reliable, when we know they'll do exactly what we expect. AI tooling isn't reliable: It introduces two lossy translation layers (thought -> English and English -> code) and a bunch of waiting in the middle that breaks any flow. With faster computers maybe we can eliminate the waiting, but the reliability just isn't there.

This applies to music, painting, all sorts of creative things. Sure there's prep time beforehand with physical creation like painting, but when someone really gets into the flow it's the same: they're not having to think about the tools so much as getting their thoughts into the end result. The tools "disappear".

> Other times, I make music because I like the feeling of turning a knob, and striking keys at just the right moment, and it gives me a feeling of satisfaction.

But I'll bet you're not thinking about "I like turning this knob" at the moment you're doing it, I'll bet you're thinking "Increase the foo" (and if you're like me it's probably more liking knowing that fact without forming the words) and the knob's immediate visceral feedback is where the satisfaction comes from because you're increasing the foo without having to think about how to do it - in part because of how reliable it is.

[card_zero]

I bet you also sometimes like to make music because the final result emerges from your intimate involvement with striking keys, no? That's the suggestion.

[BananaaRepublik]

Let me get this right. You're telling me that in your personal experience, you don't abstract away low level actions like pressing keys of your instrument or typing on the keyboard? You're genuinely telling me you derive equal pleasure from music as the feel of the keys?

Nah bro, most of us learn touch typing and musical instrument finger exercises etc when starting out, it's usually abstracted away once we get competent.

AI takes away the joy of creation, not the low level actions. That's like abstracted twice over..

[theshrike79]

Do you enjoy the process of creating a solution more than the actual solution?

This is the main difference why people argue against LLMs in programming.

I'm in the "I want to solve a problem" end of the spectrum. Many others are in the "I want the code to be elegant, maintanable and beautifully crafted - oh, yeah, the problem might be solved too" end.

[aspenmartin]

I don't think these characterizations in either direction are very helpful; I understand they're coming from a place with someone trying to make sense of why their ingrained notion of what creativity means and what the "right" way to generate software projects is is not shared by other people.

I use CC for both business and personal projects. In both cases: I want to achieve something cool. If I do it by hand, it is slow, I will need to learn something new which takes too much time and often time the thing(s) I need to learn is not interesting to me (at the time). Additionally, I am slow and perpetually unhappy with the abstractions and design choices I make despite trying very hard to think through them. With CC: it can handle parts of the project I don't want to deal with, it can help me learn the things I want to learn, it can execute quickly so I can try more things and fail fast.

What's lamentable is the conclusion of "if you use AI it is not truly creative" ("have people using AI lost all understanding of creativity or creation?" is a bit condescending).

In other threads the sensitive dynamic from the AI-skeptic crowds is more or less that AI enthusiasts "threaten or bully" people who are not enthusiastic that they will get "punished" or fall behind. Yet at the same time, AI-skeptics seem to routinely make passive aggressive implications that they are the ones truly Creating Art and are the true Craftsman; as if this venture is some elitist art form that should be gate kept by all of you True Programmers (TM).

I find these takes (1) condescending, (2) wrong and also belying a lack of imagination about what others may find genuinely enjoyable and inspiring, (3) just as much of a straw man as their gripes against others "bullying" them into using AI.