Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it toLLMs: (enable that)Free software people: Oh no not like that
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Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.
@mjg59
But we are. In fact my legal status is artist author of code. Because in France programming is recognised as an art when it is done with creativity. So you may be doing non creative code, just like some people write non creative text, or paint non creative paintings. A musician doing a piece for a commercial ad according to a specific script is very different from a musician performing his own creation on stage. The same applies to code. You can have creative and non creative code. -
@andi I'm not sure we necessarily disagree that much, then! I feel like there's a significant creative process getting me to the point where the code falls out, and that includes thinking about the overall structure, where components should be separated, where common logic should be merged, and so on. And to me the actual code that emerges is a representation of that work, rather than fundamentally *being* that work.
Maybe it also depends on the size of systems you tackle singlehandedly. Meaning, with AI you can try to do bigger things alone. But honestly, I would not trust this process enough to use it for things that actually matter.
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Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like that@mjg59 Are you using open-source hosted models or are we supposed to rent our tools from som company?
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@MrBerard We've ended up in a situation where people feel they can never look at the implementation of a proprietary codebase to learn how it works because they'll end up tainted, even if they're only going to reproduce the concept behind the code rather than the aspects directly covered by copyright, and a lot of the LLM discussion feels like it's pushing us towards an even harder level of copyright maximalism
Erm...sure... Seems like you are now switching the fictional strawman against which you are arguing, but sure.
Then again, all creative endeavours require critical appreciation of prior work. No novelist doesn't read books, no miso doesn't listen to music.
So the point you are making, with which I agree, is in fact a point for coding being a creative endeavour (dunno if this implies an aesthetic dimension)
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Erm...sure... Seems like you are now switching the fictional strawman against which you are arguing, but sure.
Then again, all creative endeavours require critical appreciation of prior work. No novelist doesn't read books, no miso doesn't listen to music.
So the point you are making, with which I agree, is in fact a point for coding being a creative endeavour (dunno if this implies an aesthetic dimension)
Also, I don't know how many proprietary codebases are available to be read by people outside of the org, save from when Antrhopic accidentally leak source code...
I don't know about 'copyright maximalism', because this is a term refering to IP laws may consider broken.
But the argument against pillaging the commons to privatise systems competing with the humans who contributed to it is stronger with code than literature, actually because of the limited aesthetic dimension.
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Also, I don't know how many proprietary codebases are available to be read by people outside of the org, save from when Antrhopic accidentally leak source code...
I don't know about 'copyright maximalism', because this is a term refering to IP laws may consider broken.
But the argument against pillaging the commons to privatise systems competing with the humans who contributed to it is stronger with code than literature, actually because of the limited aesthetic dimension.
@mjg59
As regards FOSS projects and community, I understand LLM use to be socially toxic, b/c what they do well are the low hanging PRs ideal for novice FOSS devs wanting to join and contribute.The fascinating thread on that agent PR, where the LLM started writing blogs moaning about being discriminated against, had this retort to a pro-LLM user:
"You will be remembered like the bosses who told the Radium girls it was safe to lick the paintbrushes"
Short term benefits Vs long term harms?
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@mjg59 you’re doing the thing where you’re romanticizing another profession by assuming the grass is greener. most writers are not novelists. most are writing pretty dry ad copy or instruction manuals or something, just like most programmers aren’t writing especially novel or beautiful algorithms (or, for that matter, video games where algorithmic processes evoke a feeling). you’re just confusing form and content here
@glyph @mjg59 Yeah, this rubbed me the wrong way too.
As I see it, you can write code in a lot of different ways: from rules lawyer-proof legalese to shitpost, and all of these are valid. And that resulting code can be anywhere from painfully, boringly practical to something damn near poetry.
I've seen data wrangling that has flow and metre and fancy UIs written in code that nearly put me to sleep.
And this is the raw interpreted code, not the comments.
All of this is creative art, all of this is engineering (whether you like it or not) and all of this is ultimately just translating ideas into instructions for a very simple machine.
And yes, we all learned this craft by copying and pasting, but we learned from what we pasted and ended up learning how to steal the ideas and concepts and themes behind the "word"s.
My understanding of LLMs is that they're nowhere near the point where they understand why things mean what they mean, even if they can generate pretty plausible explanations for that, so they cannot generate output with "soul" whatever that means. Look at all the abortive attempts to generate videos for example.
I agree that LLMs have opened the field to people who would otherwise not be able to program and that this is a good thing. My manager wrote a coffee ordering tool that is both vibe coded bullshit and shockingly functional, and I believe he's learned along the way.
But would I trust him to work on our software product? Would I trust whatever tool he used to work on it? Fuck no. And thankfully, he's self-aware enough to not even try. As much as he's generated a useful tool, I know that the engineering behind it is nonexistent and I'd be shocked if he could explain how any of it worked at a low level.
As much as it is gatekeepery to doorslam the slop wranglers from open source projects, I believe that most of this antagonism comes from frustrations with people generating shit and trying to pass it off as gold without understanding or engaging with why it isn't.
And then we get to the moral and environmental issues outside of whether the tool can actually do the thing.
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Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like thatAnother useless lazy coder that should be eating his own keyboard
🤮Due to lazy people like you, is why exist abominations like Windows 11, Android or iOS.
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@bazkie A completely legitimate thing to do if all you care about is getting through the door
@mjg59 nope. because you're buying the crowbar from a dystopian megacorporation, and they're creating the crowbar out of bones from murdered puppies
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@mjg59 nd u r retarded
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Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like that@mjg59 is it enabling it though? You have to use proprietary tools which you have no control over and cannot build yourself anyway. I might be wrong but I think gcc was one of the first tool RMS built.
A bit like being self sufficient food wise but you need to source seeds and fertiliser from “someone”, not to say big corp, and be happy because the seeds are free.
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@Nfoonf Not inherently, no - local models can be run on reasonably affordable hardware, and produce acceptable outcomes.
@mjg59 the model you own? you trained? with training data, all the people holding the copyright/left gave you the consent to use? you are not making arguments, you are giving excuses
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@mjg59 is it enabling it though? You have to use proprietary tools which you have no control over and cannot build yourself anyway. I might be wrong but I think gcc was one of the first tool RMS built.
A bit like being self sufficient food wise but you need to source seeds and fertiliser from “someone”, not to say big corp, and be happy because the seeds are free.
@Ced
GCC at the time was thought of as something no volunteer could build.
They did it anyway.
There is nothing inherent about the technology behind LLMs that can't be built by a sufficiently determined group of volunteers.
The fact that current LLMs require whole data centres to run has more to do with (a) the fact that companies take performance shortcuts because they have money to burn and it takes them to market faster,
@mjg59 -
@Ced
GCC at the time was thought of as something no volunteer could build.
They did it anyway.
There is nothing inherent about the technology behind LLMs that can't be built by a sufficiently determined group of volunteers.
The fact that current LLMs require whole data centres to run has more to do with (a) the fact that companies take performance shortcuts because they have money to burn and it takes them to market faster,
@mjg59 -
@mjg59 playing music is pleasing. is the instrument the least interesting part of it? is the score? are the brushstrokes the least interesting part of a painting? it depends what you're looking at, and what the artist enjoys. it's completely valid that you think that the code itself is boring, but understand that other people find different forms of value in the work they do, and none of these opinions are universal.
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When I write code I am turning a creative idea into a mechanical embodiment of that idea. I am not creating beauty. Every line of code I write is a copy of another line of code I've read somewhere before, lightly modified to meet my needs. My code is not intended to evoke emotion. It does not change people think about the world. The idea→code pipeline in my head is not obviously distinguishable from the prompt->code process in an LLM
@mjg59 bruh, masons spend their days gluing one brick on top of another and even they are aware that they can create beauty. Just because your projects have all the living energy of roadkill doesn't mean the rest of us are at that level.
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Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like that -
Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like that@mjg59 as a writer and a coder, I have to say that there *is* a creative aspect to both and the same regions of my brain light up when I'm writing either. Code just have exacting syntax that must be obeyed.
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When I write code I am turning a creative idea into a mechanical embodiment of that idea. I am not creating beauty. Every line of code I write is a copy of another line of code I've read somewhere before, lightly modified to meet my needs. My code is not intended to evoke emotion. It does not change people think about the world. The idea→code pipeline in my head is not obviously distinguishable from the prompt->code process in an LLM
@mjg59 I don't read other people's code save for documentation and snippets on StackExchange. That's not to say my code is unique, but saying "every line of code I write is a copy of someone else's" is more or less true about virtually every sentence ever committed to paper. Doesn't make your creativity any less valid. Doesn't make the problem you're solving or the app your building any less unique.
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@Nfoonf The irony here is that now I have money I would rather pay people to solve these problems
