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Comment by ibestvina | Hacker News Reader

This makes no sense to me. There are plenty of artists out there (e.g. El Anatsui), not to mention whole professions such as architects, who do not interact directly with what they are building, and yet can have profound relationship with the final product.

Discovering the right problem to solve is not necessarily coupled to being "hands on" with the "materials you're shaping".

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In my company, [enterprise IT] architects are separated into two kinds. People with a CV longer than my arm who know/anticipate everything that could fail and have reached a level of understandind that I personnally call "wisdom". And theorists, who read books and norms, who focus mostly on the nominal case, and have no idea [and no interest] in how the real world will be a hard brick wall that challenges each and every idea you invent.

Not being hands-on, and more important not LISTENING to the hands-on people and learning from them, is a massive issue in my surroundings.

So thinking hard on something is cool. But making it real is a whole different story.

Note: as Steve used to say, "real artists ship".

you think El Anatsui would concur that they didn't interact directly with what they were building? "hands on", "material you're shaping" is a metaphor

I don't see why his involvement, explaining to his team how exactly to build a piece, is any different from a developer explaining to an LLM how to build a certain feature, when it comes to the level of "being hands on".

Obviously I am not comparing his final product with my code, I am simply pointing out how this metaphor is flawed. Having "workers" shape the material according to your plans does not reduce your agency.

> I don't see why his involvement, explaining to his team how exactly to build a piece, is any different from a developer explaining to an LLM

Because everyone under him knows that a mistake big enough is a quick way to unemployment or legal actions. So the whole team is pretty much aligned. A developer using an LLM may as well try to herd cats.

First, that's quite a sad view of incentives structures. Second, you can't be serious in thinking that "worker worried they might be fired" puts the person in charge closer to the "materials" and more "hands on" with the project.

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