Hacker News Reader

Comment by CodingJeebus | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I get a huge rush of dopamine seeing LLMs build out complex features very quickly to the point that it will keep me up all night wanting to push further and further.

That's where the gambling metaphor really resonates. It's not whether or not the output is correct, I've been building software for many years and I know how direct LLMs pretty well at this point. But I'm also an alcoholic in recovery and I know that my brain is wired differently than most. And using LLMs has tested my ability to self-regulate in ways that I haven't dealt with since I deleted social media years ago.

View on HN

> Personally, I get a huge rush of dopamine seeing LLMs build out complex features very quickly

I dont think i've read a sentence on this website i can relate to less.

I watch the LLM build things and it feels completely numb, i may as well be watching paint dry. It means nothing to me.

I wonder if the difference here is age/experience or what you're working on/in.

When I was 20, writing code was interesting, by the time I was 28 it became "solving the problem" and then moved on to "I only really enjoy a good disaster to clean up".

All of my time has been spent solving other peoples problems, so I was never invested in the domain that much.

Yeah, I used to enjoy writing code but after a while I realised I actually more enjoy creating tools that I (and other people) liked to use. Now I can do that really quickly even with my very limited free time, at a higher level of abstraction, but it's still me designing the tool.

And despite the amount of people telling me the code is probably awful, the tools work great and I'm happily using them without worrying about the code anymore than I worry about the assembly generated by a compiler.

Trust me, I have many days where I wish I had your relationship to this. I wish it were as boring as watching paint dry. But it triggers that part of my brain that wants more, and I have to be very careful about that.

It also doesn’t help that producing features is also wired to a sense of monetary compensation. More-so if you’re building a product to sell that might finally be your ticket to whatever your perception of socio-economic victory is.

That's definitely part of it, sure. I also just get a cosmic kick out thinking about the possibilities that this technology unlocks and that thinking can spiral in all sorts of unhealthy ways.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com