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I do not think it's a good thing for normal people to have to learn programming languages to built programs to solve their problems. To me this is like how the HAM radio people used to be required to learn Morse code.

I get that it might suck for people like us, who took the time to learn those languages! Oh well.

by krapp4 hours ago|

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>I do not think it's a good thing for normal people to have to learn programming languages to built programs to solve their problems. To me this is like how the HAM radio people used to be required to learn Morse code.

No one is saying that anyone has to, but being able to is the whole thesis of the hacker ethos. Knowing how to do things yourself versus being a consumer dependent on corporations.

And children are learning how to program nowadays... although that won't be the case for long. My nephew is taking programming classes in school and making games in Roblox. But soon the only thing they'll teach is how to prompt Claude. We were almost at a point where programming could become general knowledge and that might have enabled widespread freedom and control over the evils of proprietary software and commercialism. Now we're burning it all down and a depressing number of people like yourself on this erstwhile forum of programmers and hackers are actually dancing on the ashes.

Using a service to generate software for you is not "building programs to solve your problems." You aren't building anything, and you certainly aren't learning anything that would give you any real control over it or let you exercise freedom relative to it. AI is just proprietary software and data theft with more steps and a lot more fascism.

It doesn't just suck for us, it sucks for everyone.

by tptacek4 hours ago|

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It could well be devastating for "the hacker ethos". You can lament that all you want. But there are more important things than "the hacker ethos".

by ejj283 hours ago|

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Sure, lots of things are more important than "the hacker ethos". Like critical thinking and independent thought, self-reliance, the joy of actually creating something yourself (which AI is a hollow, artificial substitute for).

Why shouldn't one lament sacrificing individuality and creativity, and increasing our reliance on corporations, all for the sake of convenience?

by tptacek3 hours ago|

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I think you just wrote "lots of things are more important than the hacker ethos, like [axiomatic rederivation of the hacker ethos]". That's not a persuasive argument.

by ejj283 hours ago|

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I think it's just easy to dismiss "the hacker ethos" without considering the qualities it actually consists of. Maybe you'd disagree, but I think those qualities are very important and worth protecting.

by tptacek3 hours ago|

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I'm not saying it's not important, just that you can't reasonably expect to orient all of society around it. And that's what we're talking about when we talk about how computing is going to work for ordinary people.

by ejj283 hours ago|

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I'm not expecting to orient all of society around it, but I do believe that it's harmful to remove or replace it where it does exist.

Ease and convenience are not worth the cost of giving up bits and pieces of our humanity here and there until there's nothing left; Pre-AI computing has already taken enough of it.

by tptacek2 hours ago|

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When you suggest that ordinary people should not use personal applications that they've built with AI because it robs them of the hacker spirit, that's what you're doing: orienting all of society around your aesthetic preference.

by ejj282 hours ago|

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Obviously I'm going to have beliefs about what I think is good or bad for society, same as yourself.

> I do not think it's a good thing for normal people to have to learn programming languages to built programs to solve their problems.

Is this not also "orienting all of society around your aesthetic preference"?

by krapp1 hours ago|

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But you expect to orient all of society around LLMs.

by tptacek1 hours ago|

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No, I'm following society's lead on this one. Maybe people won't want this! Then we'll fail. I'll be fine with that.

by zahlman2 hours ago|

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…Please remind me, what is the name of this website we're posting on?

by tptacek2 hours ago|

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What's your point?

by famouswaffles3 hours ago|

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>We were almost at a point where programming could become general knowledge

Lol. Not only was this not true but we weren't even close. Genuinely bizarre that you could think this.

>enabled widespread freedom and control over the evils of proprietary software and commercialism.

Ironically, the only reality where this is remotely feasible is one where frontier llms can be run locally on phone like hardware and it becomes popular to do so.