Hacker News Reader

Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

I’ve heard this analogy used to justify firing developers for not using GenAI: a cabinet maker who doesn’t use power tools shouldn’t be working as a cabinet maker.

If only programming languages (or GenAI) were tools like hammers and augers and drills.

Even then the cabinets you see that come out of shops that only use hand tools are some of the most sturdy, beautiful, and long lasting pieces that become the antiques. They use fewer cuts, less glue, avoid using nails and screws where a proper joint will do, etc.

View on HN

Less glue and avoidance of nails and screws doesn't make it sturdier. Fastening things strongly makes your furniture sturdier than not doing so. Antiques suck as often as they don't, and moreover you are only seeing the ones that survived without a base rate to compare it to; they succeeded in spite of power tools, but power tools would have made the same object better.

Comparing it to AI makes no sense. Invoking it is supposed to bring to mind the fact that it's worse in well-known ways, but then the statement 'better in every way' no longer applies. Using Rust passively improves the engineering quality compared to using anything else, unlike AI which sacrifices engineering quality for iteration speed.

> Less glue and avoidance of nails and screws doesn't make it sturdier. Fastening things strongly makes your furniture sturdier than not doing so.

No disrespect intended, but your criticism of the analogy reveals that you are speaking from assumptions, but not knowledge, about furniture construction.

In fact, less glue, and fewer fasteners (i.e. design that leverages the strength of the materials), is exactly how quality furniture is made more sturdy.

There was an interesting video on YT where an engineer from a fastener company joined a carpenter to compare their products with traditional joints.

The traditional joints held up very well and even beat the engineered connectors in some cases. Additionally one must be careful with screws and fasteners: if they’re not used according to spec, they may be significantly weaker than expected. The presented screws had to be driven in diagonally from multiple positions to reach the specified strength; driving them straight in, as the average DIYer would, would have resulted in a weak joint.

Glue is typically used in traditional joinery, so less glue would actually have a negative effect.

> Glue is typically used in traditional joinery, so less glue would actually have a negative effect.

And a lot of traditional joinery is about keeping the carcase sufficiently together even after the hide glue completely breaks down so that it can be repaired.

Modern glues allow you to use a lot less complicated joinery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com