[haickernews]

This article has a narrow view of "making" which is stuck hopelessly in the past, in my honest opinion. A human in the loop guiding the process is 100% making something, no matter how much you torture the definition of "make."

When I write software with Claude, I'm the one with the agency, not Claude. Without me, the software wouldn't even exist. A director "makes" movies. A collage artist "makes" images. A fisherman "makes" a catch. Someone searching YouTube and clicking on a video "makes" a video. These are widely agreed upon definitions, so it should not be controversial to say you "make" software with LLMs.

[globular-toast]

But the author doesn't feel like they are making it.

I feel the same way if the agent moves too quickly. If I ask for a feature in high-level language the LLM will make many guesses and assumptions to carry that out. I don't feel like I'm involved in the creation of that software at all. It feels more like running a find and replace on someone else's code to make it to what I want.

That's why I instruct the LLM at a low level, that is at the level of the code itself. I'll ask for refactors, I'll ask for a new class etc. This cuts down on time spent typing while I still remain on top of the code.

At least that's the idea. But there's still a problem. LLMs are trained to want to write working code. If what you asked for won't work, it'll just fill in the blanks and guess to make it work. And then you don't feel like you made it again.

Basically, we kid ourselves into thinking it's just a supercharged text editor that we control, but it's actually an LLM that just doesn't work that way.

[tmseidman]

Someone clicking on a YouTube video makes that video?

[orphereus]

"I made this company goddamnit, I made all of the iPhones because I had my VPs build factories in China that make iPhones." - imaginary Steve Jobs

[storkhound]

There's a word for what you're doing there: equivocation.

> A director "makes" movies.

You clearly don't appreciate what that means. It's a deeply creative and involved process, not just waving a film into being with their flapping arms. Moreover, there are dozens to hundreds (or more!) people working as a team on everything from sets to cameras to post-production to ...

When we say a director "made" that movie, we don't mean that was the extent of the making, nor do we mean they did no heavy lifting themselves. Neither of those sentiments are true.

> A collage artist "makes" images

They do! You seem to be trying to equivocate their use of previous components to create a new expression directly with .. well .. not.

A more accurate analogy here between software development and the collage artist might be using libraries others have written in your projects from which you create something new.

Collage is not the same process or product as directing an LLM. Again, equivocation.

> A fisherman "makes" a catch.

Words have more than one meaning, but the meanings can be (and in this case, are) divergent. "Synonyms", they are called!

Literally equivocating, and entirely meaningless.

> Someone searching YouTube and clicking on a video "makes" a video.

Literally nobody says this, thinks this, or refers to the act in this way.

This is taking equivocation into "making up new meanings from whole cloth" territory.

> These are widely agreed upon definitions

No, they aren't. You're making an argument hoping it justifies your choices, but mostly just demonstrating you don't understand the words you are using.

> so it should not be

Your premise is rubbish, so there can be no "so...".

If you wish to use LLMs to spit out source code, that's your choice to make. How hard is it for you to just also own the fact that the act is not a creative one, and you are "making" in the same way that a customer delivering a set of requirements to a dev team is "making" software. There ought to be no shame in that if it isn't shameful.

[haickernews]

dont worry man it was a joke