The Seven Voyages Of Steve3d ago

I don’t want to describe what I want to a computer in plain English. I want to express it in a formalised language more akin to mathematics than prose. Unambiguous. Logical. Deterministic.

Even if describing it in English worked perfectly, and had no other downsides, I’d still hate it. Because I wouldn’t be making it, I’d be product managing it, & I *never* wanted to be a PM.

The whole point was to directly make things. To feel the digital clay in my hands. Being a supervisor is not enough.

Show threadThe Seven Voyages Of Steve3d ago
Some people say it’s just like moving from assembly to a higher level language, like the LLM is a compiler. But it’s absolutely not - compilers are still formal language and completely deterministic: you can trust them to produce a known output for a given input, every single time. With such a guarantee, it truly is just an abstraction, a productivity tool with directly analogous characteristics to the thing it is building on top of. You’re still in control, every action has a traceable outcome
Show threadThe Seven Voyages Of Steve3d ago
LLMs are deliberately non-deterministic. So in that regard they are more like humans I suppose; semi-random and in need of coaxing. If you like a supervising role in conditions like that I guess you’re fine, but I don’t. I like to make things with tools that do exactly what I say, every time, like clockwork. Even if it takes longer than asking someone / something else to do it for me. Because the making was the point.
Show threadFrank Reiff

@sinbad

There are other downsides as well:

- it’s hard to get into “flow” if you’re just supervising.

- it’s easy to create slop

- it’s more fatiguing because the execution part is automated but delayed

- it’s much easier to burn yourself out

- it’s much easier to delude yourself as to quality and actual achievement

Mar 28 at 2:42pmIvory for iOS
Show threadThe Seven Voyages Of Steve2d ago
@frankreiff yeah it sounds *exactly* like product management. It’s not for me; I don’t necessarily love the typing of code, but I enjoy the general hands-on craft of it, the teasing out of the problem space in close conversation with the implementation, the tight feedback loop of action and result. I hated being a manager because being at arms length from the solution and operating on it second-hand is frustrating to me. I like getting to the end result too but jumping to the end loses too much