[xtracto]

>It's also, frankly, quite lonely. Programming with an LLM is an intensely solitary activity. > You and the machine, going back and forth, refining and prompting and reviewing.

I just want to comment on this. Maybe im part of some spectrum, but building stuff with AI in that "solitary mode" ive found it really enjoyable. It takes me too the times 30 years ago when I was a 14 year old writing my own games on Basic and C++ with Allegro.

I had nobody but tutorials and books. And the hky of building, compiling and seeing the result for myself was very enticing.

Maybe it's because I found peers my age uninteresting. I lived in a small Mexican town where 14 year olds where thinking in bullying someone, and unfortunately that someone was usually me.

If someone remembers The Hackers Manifesto (The Conscience of a Hacker) I feel that again after so many years, with AI. Edit: particularly this part:

---

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...

Or feels threatened by me...

Or thinks I'm a smart ass...

Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

[carimura]

Ya my memories are similar: ~12 years old building BBS's late into the night, then after college first startup, programming from midnight to 5am "in the flow" - nobody around or online. Just me and the problem at hand.

[imp0cat]

I get your point, but:

> "If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. "

Is that really true though with an LLM? I don't think so.

[xtracto]

Oh but it really is. An LLM is no magic wand. It's a model as its name rigthly indicates.

Those of us who have worked in modeling and simulations know two principles of models:

- garbage in, garbage out

- all models are wrong, some are useful.

Point being, usually when "the model is wrong" it's because we put the wrong input (too complicated prompt for the model?) or something similar. Its just a machine, like a meat grinder that we turn then cogs.

[queenkjuul]

I really think LLMs are capable of screwing up good input. They're not deterministic like a meat grinder

[streb-lo]

I think you mean "They're not deterministic, like a meat grinder"

[ryandrake]

Yes, that was a weird one for me, too. I've always thought of programming as, at its purest form, a solitary activity. "Pair Programming" and "Programming Teams" are ideas companies graft onto the activity, or force on us, to build bigger things. At its core, programming is a single person, typing commands into a computer.

Working with an LLM doesn't really feel like programming at all. It's more like telling an intern to program, which some might like, but I find totally unsatisfying and not anything like programming.

[Schlagbohrer]

Being able to ask an AI an embarassing newbie question that I should really know but I just need someone to remind me / confirm my half-forgotten knowledge...