[josephg]

Everything I want to make is new. I don't understand the objection.

For example, the photo backup system I want to make will let me manage my ~400gb photo library. I want my library backed up on a couple devices, running linux and freebsd. I want my mac and iphone to have a local mirror of all the favorited photos, and when I'm at home, I want to be able to browse all photos from those devices by streaming them over the local network. I want native macos & ios app interfaces to view and manage all that.

I don't know any existing software that meets my requirements. I don't think any such software exists. Apple, Dropbox and Google will solve this problem for me if I store all my photos in their cloud and pay them an ongoing subscription for the privilege. I'd much rather make something myself, and back up my photos on my own hard drives.

Making something like this is simple enough, but very time consuming. If claude can take the drudgery out of it, well, I think that's just delightful.

[righthand]

Ente photos is one thing and there are others.

You can accomplish most of that by installing Syncthing.

But the objection is that you’re not really building anything new even if you think it’s a new idea. By your definition you’re building for yourself and not sharing…so what good are your little projects. Reading your original list it just seems like you want to build and run software without having to do any research, even if a solution already exists.

[josephg]

> But the objection is that you’re not really building anything new even if you think it’s a new idea. By your definition you’re building for yourself and not sharing…so what good are your little projects.

What an incredibly blinkered view. You think there's no value at all in making software unless your program solves a truly novel problem, and does so for millions of users?

There's so much joy that can be found in simple, disposable acts of creativity. I don't need the world to applaud when I cook an omelette, make a table out of wood or play a piece on the piano. Why would I need that from the software I make? Just because you can buy a table from IKEA doesn't mean its not fun to make one yourself. Just because someone on spotify played it better doesn't mean there's no joy in playing music.

Why would I hesitate to make my ideal photo library program, just because other programs exist? What a sad, self-limiting rule.

[righthand]

No you would hesitate because you yourself said you dont have the time. So why would you still develop it if you dont have the time to maintain or develop a project like that. You’re the one being sad and limiting unless you find a reason not to be. Sorry you had to rely on Llms to get a decent photo setup running but you also DIDNT have to reinvent the wheel to accomplish that. Waste all the time in the world that you want building single use stuff with LLMs but dont walk around like it wasn’t possible before because it required dev time then turn around and tell us you have plenty of time to screw around with an LLM which is proven to not give time savings. Im glad you found out about code generators to start projects though.

[josephg]

You seem mad at me for making fun projects with LLMs. Of course it was possible to do fun stuff before LLMs. Been there, done that! It’s just even easier now that I can rent an llm to do all the boring bits. How sick is that!

Does that make you mad? Why does other people enjoying themselves with LLMs make you mad?

[righthand]

No it doesnt make me mad, I’m just trying to point out to you why people object to your comment. As is the topic of this thread chain.

[josephg]

Liar. Your comment above is spiteful and demeaning. I suggest taking a moment to think about where that energy is coming from. It’s not coming from me.

[argee]

I have everything this guy is talking about just from running Filerun (with the Nextcloud client for mirrors) and backing up to Backblaze R2. At some point developers seem to forget that other developers exist.

[josephg]

> At some point developers seem to forget that other developers exist.

At some point developers seem to forget that making stuff is fun. The fact SQLite and GCC exist doesn't mean you're banned from making a database or a C compiler.

You're allowed to make stuff just because.

[cryo32]

What's your time and life worth? You pay Apple to deal with it (which I do) and get to live a peaceful life and go out and take photos and have experiences. Or do you spend weeks implementing your own solution with Claude. The latter is considerably higher cost in time and money.

AI is seen as a way out of drudgery but you're just trading one problem for another.

[satvikpendem]

The implementation is part of the fun.

[ori_b]

So why would you buy it off of Anthropic?

[duckmysick]

In any activity you can take shortcuts that makes it easier. It's up to you how many (if any) you want.

Take woodworking for example. When I build a kitchen cabinet, I can get lumber that's already smooth and treated, I can buy drawer tracks, I can use power tools instead of a handsaw and a screwdriver, I can use a pocket hole jig to make joints easier. I still have to do more planning and assembling than with the Ikea cabinet, which also takes more work than having a contractor do everything for me.

I'm doing it my way because it's fun for me. Other people might enjoy other parts of the process - or different things altogether.

There's a whole spectrum between doing everything from scratch and paying someone to have it done for you.

[satvikpendem]

I don't understand the question. For one thing I use local models mainly, but even if I didn't, I'd be buying the tokens from cloud model providers, not the prepackaged, fully complete software itself. I buy the tokens to make what I want.

It's actually quite similar to buying the services of a programmer off Upwork to build something for me, only with LLMs it's way cheaper and faster, with a shorter feedback loop.

[slopinthebag]

I think their point is that you aren't really doing the implementing, Claude (or any model really) is. If you genuinely find prompting LLMs to be fun, then by all means go for it.

[satvikpendem]

What I find fun is getting the output to exactly what I want. I don't care whether I'm personally implementing something or not, and that's what many in this thread seem not to understand.

[unknownfuture]

Interesting that you think building is just coding.

What do you think architects do? Or interior designers? Or civil engineers?

[ori_b]

Interesting that you think coding just typing. Code is just a language where the problem is specified in fine detail; the biggest value proposition of an LLM is being able to hand-wave and let some other tool take care of guessing at detail, where you can't be bothered to specify it in full. And, part of the process of specifying in full forces you to rethink design assumptions.

Architecture certainly isn't building, and neither is interior design. Civil engineers calculate and specify the loads in excruciating detail, because if they didn't, people would die.

[unknownfuture]

No, coding is the act of reifying all the things that actually matter--the requirements, the visual design, the system design, etc--into a form that a computer can execute.

The biggest value proposition of an LLM is being able to focus on the truly high-value activities while allowing the machine take care of much of that reification.

That you think architecture or interior design isn't building tells you prefer to downplay or devalue any work that isn't hands on construction. It's an interesting perspective, but it's one I'll never be able to understand or agree with.

[uncognic]

Take a look at https://immich.app/

[josephg]

Oh that looks lovely. I enjoy the UI and all the work on tagging and classification. But its still missing some features I want:

- I want native desktop apps

- I want P2P device sync. My laptop and my home server should be peers. Just with different rules for which photos are stored locally on each device.

- I want per-device storage rules. (Eg, "I want all my favorited photos, and recent photos up to 50gb on my laptop").

- Backups. I want to be able to plug in an external hard drive and backup my photos (with some rules). Then disconnect the drive and see in the metadata for those photos that I have a copy of the full res RAW on that drive.

But even if other programs exist, its still fun to make something myself. Authoring your own software gives you a different relationship with the computer. You're less of a consumer. You can change or tweak features on a whim. Psychologically, its kind of like being in your own home vs being in a hotel room. If you hate the furniture at home, you can move it or change it. You can decorate however you like. In a hotel, you're affected by your environment but you have no agency over it. I think its much more healthy to create.

[rrvsh]

You're not wrong, but a fork of Immich would achieve much of the same, no? I understand this is probably a detour from the conversation, but I've been thinking of doing the same to add some niceties

[josephg]

If my goal was to make something that fits in with the existing ecosystem and has the most users possible, I could do that. Try to make some changes which could possibly be upstreamed. Spend my time going back and forth on minutia in github pull requests. Learn Dart. Figure out how to wrap a typescript & dart app in a macOS native window. Or turn to electron. (Yuck.)

But I’m optimising for the feeling of joy and agency over my tools. I also want to experiment with p2p / local first data structures in a real app. I could fork immich and rewrite the data model. But that all seems much less fun.

At the end of the day, I’m not doing this for other people. I’m doing this for me. Learning dart so I can hack on someone else’s code sounds like a pain in the butt. Not like something I’d want to do for fun on the weekend.

Working on someone else’s code seems like a strange default. You and others have jumped on me for wanting to make my own thing instead of using - or forking - someone else’s software. Can you help me understand why? Why would that be the default for a fun hobby project? I’m confused.

[rrvsh]

No, I'm not jumping on you. I'm asking why not base your personal software on Immich so you get the benefits of a mature (ish) software. Sorry if it came off that way, but I'm not saying you need to share it - I'm saying why not make a personal fork instead of building your own from scratch