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Comment by slopinthebag | Hacker News Reader

I think most people feel pride when they put effort into doing something challenging and in return achieve a good result. You can use high level languages and libraries and still put effort into something that is challenging, thus feeling a sense of pride. Of course, they may feel more pride if they achieve the same result without libraries, or in a more challenging language.

Prompting an LLM neither requires comparative effort nor is comparatively challenging, thus it's would be odd to feel a sense of pride from any associated outcomes.

I cannot believe this even requires an explanation.

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Developing a functional app that meets your needs with an LLM takes it's own kind of skill, and is substantially more difficult if you can't recognize when the machine is steering your architecture in the wrong direction. It takes actual, real work. It's certainly a completely different kind of work than writing most of the code yourself, but so is using Java when compared to hand writing x86 opcodes.

Prompting an LLM to produce good code isn't a lot of work for you. Writing hex without an assembler or compiler would be a lot of work for you.

People have ideas, and now they have better tools to turn those ideas into reality. They aren't doing it like you would do it, but they're getting it done all the same, getting their needs met, and enjoying the ride.

Maybe just let people have fun, and when they report that they are in fact having fun... believe them.

I'm not saying people can't have fun, I'm saying it's a misplaced sense of pride that gives me the ick when I sense it in others. I see plenty of people who readily disclose that their thing they "built" was just slopped together by an LLM and this is perfectly okay, because they aren't trying to take credit for accomplishments that they didn't put in the expected effort for.

The difference between the skill & effort required to build vs prompt your way to something is orders of magnitude different. If it took just as much effort, people would just do it by hand anyways.

I think “build vs prompt” is a false binary that frames the argument badly.

There are way more nuanced uses of LLMs than skill-free “write me a facebook clone.” Like, hey LLM, help me develop tests of X, review this design for X, help me articulate what is wrong with the code for X, give me ideas for simplifying X, suggest optimizations for X, help me debug this failure trace for X, help me apply this refactor across all of X, and on and on. Even these are stupid examples that way over simplify.

I’m super proud of the work I’ve created /alongside/ LLMs. I’ll let it build me development aides and such with little oversight and there’s no skill there. But you can use it deliberately and maintain control, and it’s amazing to have a tool that can look through your code with you from so many angles.

Yeah, there's something pathetic about being proud of something you didn't actually get challenged by making. Like, I love building Lego sets. It's relaxing, it's fun, and I enjoy having the completed model to put on a shelf and look at. But I would never in a million years say I was proud of those Lego models, or that I had a sense of accomplishment. That wouldn't be merited.

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