undefined | Better HN

0 pointsIanCal12d ago0 comments

Do you want to eat good food or make good food? Is doing the dishes something you hand to a machine or do you always do it by hand? Are there any ingredients you buy pre-made (pesto, curry pastes, do you make your own panko breadcrumbs)?

0 comments

bluefirebrand12d ago

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that people have an intrinsic incentive to care about learning to cook because eating is something we have to do every single day regardless

No such incentive exists for building software

IanCalOP12d ago

No such incentive exists for an enormous amount of what humans do.

People don’t only build software because they have to.

bluefirebrand12d ago

I wasn't saying otherwise, I was only making the point that cooking is a terrible counter example

apsurd12d ago

Aren't you proving the point that it's nuanced?

Thread seems to be saying LLMs are great because they do the dirty work and leave the fun work to humans. The counter-point is not exactly that LLMs aren't capable of doing dirty-work, it's that the nature of work isn't going to split so cleanly.

And cooking is a good example. Cooking is work. And slop. And it's also incredibly rewarding and creative, if you want it to be. Robots can help along that entire journey.

Maybe this is the core point: "cooking is a solved problem" that's how engineers always think. Except it's not. And 100% automation is still not going to break that discussion so cleanly.

IanCalOP12d ago

The comment I was responding to was looking at a state where we looked at markdown files instead of programming, my point was to agree with the original quote that they can remove the drudgery.

> Maybe this is the core point: "cooking is a solved problem" that's how engineers always think.

But it isn’t, that’s a lazy stereotype of a subset.

apsurd12d ago

Gotcha. the engineer generalization was to plant a stake in the ground. I do hear that quite often, especially from higher titled engineers. in any case, definitely admit it's not all of them, and perhaps it's even a vocal minority that i'm better served to intentionally work to expand my influences.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

bluefirebrand12d ago

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that people have an intrinsic incentive to care about learning to cook because eating is something we have to do every single day regardless

No such incentive exists for building software

IanCalOP12d ago

No such incentive exists for an enormous amount of what humans do.

People don’t only build software because they have to.

bluefirebrand12d ago

I wasn't saying otherwise, I was only making the point that cooking is a terrible counter example

apsurd12d ago

Aren't you proving the point that it's nuanced?

And cooking is a good example. Cooking is work. And slop. And it's also incredibly rewarding and creative, if you want it to be. Robots can help along that entire journey.

Maybe this is the core point: "cooking is a solved problem" that's how engineers always think. Except it's not. And 100% automation is still not going to break that discussion so cleanly.

IanCalOP12d ago

The comment I was responding to was looking at a state where we looked at markdown files instead of programming, my point was to agree with the original quote that they can remove the drudgery.

> Maybe this is the core point: "cooking is a solved problem" that's how engineers always think.

But it isn’t, that’s a lazy stereotype of a subset.

apsurd12d ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse