My experience with generative-AI has been that, at its very best, it is subtly wrong in ways that only an expert in the relevant subject would recognise.
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You know what? HyperCard was a glorious moment in time that I dearly miss: an army of non-experts were bashing together and sharing weird and wonderful stacks that were part 'zine, part adventure game and part database. Instead of laughing at vibe-coders, maybe we should ask ourselves why the current state-of-the-art in beginner-friendly programming tools is a planet-boiling roulette wheel.
@jonathanhogg this is my central response to the "AI makes software development accessible" argument.
Once upon a time anyone could program their personal computer using a book that came with it. We taught it to all the kids in my tiny town's elementary school. My shopkeep neighbor and our local mechanic wrote their own custom software with no CS background.
BASIC, Hypercard, personal computers, printed manuals > LLM's.
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My experience with generative-AI has been that, at its very best, it is subtly wrong in ways that only an expert in the relevant subject would recognise. So I don't worry about us creating super-intelligent AI, I worry about us allowing that expertise to atrophy through laziness and greed. I refuse to use LLMs not because I'm scared of how clever they are, but because I do not wish to become stupider.
@jonathanhogg this is nicely put.
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R AodeRelay shared this topic
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"planet-boiling roulette wheel" is the name of my upcoming experimental jazzcore EP
@pikesley @jonathanhogg looking forward to watching them at EMF later this year
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My experience with generative-AI has been that, at its very best, it is subtly wrong in ways that only an expert in the relevant subject would recognise. So I don't worry about us creating super-intelligent AI, I worry about us allowing that expertise to atrophy through laziness and greed. I refuse to use LLMs not because I'm scared of how clever they are, but because I do not wish to become stupider.
The big problem isn't people allowing AI into their work. They should fight back, you're exactly right.
The big problem is tech bros dont care, they BOUGHT ALL the Ram, they bought ALL the hard drives on the planet.
They intend -> no choice, there will be no allow or not allow, they are building an AI prison around earth.
They bought all the hard drives.
They bought all the ram
https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal
AI is prison.
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You know what? HyperCard was a glorious moment in time that I dearly miss: an army of non-experts were bashing together and sharing weird and wonderful stacks that were part 'zine, part adventure game and part database. Instead of laughing at vibe-coders, maybe we should ask ourselves why the current state-of-the-art in beginner-friendly programming tools is a planet-boiling roulette wheel.
@jonathanhogg
Help us get the federated wiki there.It is more than a successor in spirit to HyperCard.
You would be surprised to learn about what #FedWiki does.
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@jarkman I can absolutely bend your ear at EMF, but conveniently I also recently gave a talk about it at Alpaca!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9khHD9sB7M&list=PLxqmZjMvoVzw773-Fo9ajkujFfOThuFOP&index=9
@jarkman @jonathanhogg Would love to have my ear bent about Flitter at EMF
. Are you planning to do your talk there? (I guess there’s that YouTube you posted, but I kind of like live performance 
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I will say one thing for generative AI: since these tools function by remixing/translating existing information, that vibe programming is so popular demonstrates a colossal failure on the part of our industry in not making this stuff easier. If a giant ball of statistics can mostly knock up a working app in minutes, this shows not that gen-AI is insanely clever, but that most of the work in making an app has always been stupid. We have gatekeeped programming behind vast walls of nonsense.
@jonathanhogg
Feel free to devise non-gatekept programming -
@jarkman @jonathanhogg Would love to have my ear bent about Flitter at EMF
. Are you planning to do your talk there? (I guess there’s that YouTube you posted, but I kind of like live performance ) -
@jarkman I can absolutely bend your ear at EMF, but conveniently I also recently gave a talk about it at Alpaca!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9khHD9sB7M&list=PLxqmZjMvoVzw773-Fo9ajkujFfOThuFOP&index=9
@jonathanhogg Thanks! I'll absorb that and then I can ask you better questions at EMF.
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R ActivityRelay shared this topic
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You know what? HyperCard was a glorious moment in time that I dearly miss: an army of non-experts were bashing together and sharing weird and wonderful stacks that were part 'zine, part adventure game and part database. Instead of laughing at vibe-coders, maybe we should ask ourselves why the current state-of-the-art in beginner-friendly programming tools is a planet-boiling roulette wheel.
@jonathanhogg lazarus still exists, as a faint remanent of those times
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@jonathanhogg @jarkman Ack. Having now watched, I think your Alpaca talk is a pretty good intro. I see some resonance in your approach with OpenSCAD (different goals, of course).
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I will say one thing for generative AI: since these tools function by remixing/translating existing information, that vibe programming is so popular demonstrates a colossal failure on the part of our industry in not making this stuff easier. If a giant ball of statistics can mostly knock up a working app in minutes, this shows not that gen-AI is insanely clever, but that most of the work in making an app has always been stupid. We have gatekeeped programming behind vast walls of nonsense.
@jonathanhogg that's an interesting take. wouldn't that mean the same applies to art then?
Software development is in my opinion a creative task, and "AI" has shown that people will take shortcuts to get "results" faster just to get the recognition. I think the problem might be more in impatience and how our society doesn't allow things to take time.
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@jonathanhogg @jarkman Ack. Having now watched, I think your Alpaca talk is a pretty good intro. I see some resonance in your approach with OpenSCAD (different goals, of course).
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We seem to have largely stopped innovating on trying to lower barriers to programming in favour of creating endless new frameworks and libraries for a vanishingly small number of near-identical languages. It is the mid-2020s and people are wringing their hands over Rust as if it was some inexplicable new thing rather than a C-derivative that incorporates decades old type theory. You know what I consider to be genuinely ground-breaking programming tools? VisiCalc, HyperCard and Scratch.
@warmsignull [thread]
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@dasgrueneblatt I think you have misunderstood me: I think vibe coding is a horrendous problem, but it is a symptom of an industry failing. That people are trying to steer a tank with a speak'n'spell is because we have not made decent bikes.
" That people are trying to steer a tank with a speak'n'spell is because we have not made decent bikes." -- if we look at the real-world situation of your metaphor, we see that when "decent bikes" ARE finally here, the establishment begins to gatekeep and legislate against them /because/ they are too effective, at overturning the status quo - ostensibly on the grounds that they are "dangerous" when in the wrong hands.
Wondering if the analogy feeds back in the other direction too.
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@jonathanhogg that's an interesting take. wouldn't that mean the same applies to art then?
Software development is in my opinion a creative task, and "AI" has shown that people will take shortcuts to get "results" faster just to get the recognition. I think the problem might be more in impatience and how our society doesn't allow things to take time.
@codingcatgirl Thanks for this! As someone who has also called themself an artist for over a decade, I have a lot of thoughts on this too, but perhaps I need to mull for a bit and then start a new thread. I’ll drop you a link when I start posting
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You know what? HyperCard was a glorious moment in time that I dearly miss: an army of non-experts were bashing together and sharing weird and wonderful stacks that were part 'zine, part adventure game and part database. Instead of laughing at vibe-coders, maybe we should ask ourselves why the current state-of-the-art in beginner-friendly programming tools is a planet-boiling roulette wheel.
@jonathanhogg Scratch is excellent. My kid's been using it. I used hypercard at his age and it was a lot fun.
Had it not been because our teacher had acquired two macs into the class, and we could spend time before and after school, I don't think it would have been as fun. It's not just the tools, but also the environment and culture.
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@jarkman @jonathanhogg Several years ago, I played around with using Haskell as a substrate for a DSL. Used a combinator parser (Parsec) to spit out a directly executable “compiled” function. I’ve occasionally thought it would be fun to do something similar for CSG.
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@jarkman @jonathanhogg Several years ago, I played around with using Haskell as a substrate for a DSL. Used a combinator parser (Parsec) to spit out a directly executable “compiled” function. I’ve occasionally thought it would be fun to do something similar for CSG.
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My experience with generative-AI has been that, at its very best, it is subtly wrong in ways that only an expert in the relevant subject would recognise. So I don't worry about us creating super-intelligent AI, I worry about us allowing that expertise to atrophy through laziness and greed. I refuse to use LLMs not because I'm scared of how clever they are, but because I do not wish to become stupider.
@jonathanhogg At worst, it's screamingly wrong in a way that only someone knowledgeable will recognize. Thus chatbots become a source of disinformation.
