as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
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as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
it feels unfair that I know so many people who agonize over beautiful code and suffer from imposter syndrome but this little fucker from nvidia can argue against the existence of beauty in what we do because capital demands it and his disdain for what he does reinforces it
code is art, and LLM code is ugly, regardless of what capital wants https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/116424732252818630
@zzt Sometimes I'm afraid I've become too jaded and cynical about my craft, and then I read a comment like that and I realize that you know what, I'm fine actually. The world may have taken some of my soul, but I've still got more than that.
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@zzt @aerique that notably is also where the disassociation from reality comes in. It's not socipathy when they reject the external costs.
These people are so utterly cooked that they don't believe those externalized costs *exist*, and if they do, the evidence of the damage is false or vastly overstated. And because of their delusional disorder, they will only believe the chatbot when it says these costs aren't real or are minimal. How could anyone BUT the chatbot know?!
@zzt @aerique and to be *extremely* clear here: these are MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCIES. They are not 'oh, go see a therapist in 3-6 months.'
They are "you need IMMEDIATE intervention," and many public faces I've seen are *textbook* involuntary in-patient for their own safety and the safety of others.Even when they seem 'harmless' because they're 'just burning money.' This escalates to extreme self-harm very quickly.
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we exist in a world with poetry
where the way words are organized is part of the beauty
how can the same not apply to code?
do you not have eyes?
@zzt@mas.to sorry i keep sending you blog links but this relates to a thing I said a year ago! https://rustredriver.com/blog/20250310-cyberia-source-code-as-narrative.html
the programmers refusal to engage with their identity as a writer renders it impossible to see their own use of language as artistic. It can only exist as assembly-line machine-like production, because all you can do is "make more words" to accomplish any of your goals -
@fisk you’ve never known any artists and it shows
what a depressing life you’ve chosen
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@zzt@mas.to sorry i keep sending you blog links but this relates to a thing I said a year ago! https://rustredriver.com/blog/20250310-cyberia-source-code-as-narrative.html
the programmers refusal to engage with their identity as a writer renders it impossible to see their own use of language as artistic. It can only exist as assembly-line machine-like production, because all you can do is "make more words" to accomplish any of your goals -
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@zzt@mas.to sorry i keep sending you blog links but this relates to a thing I said a year ago! https://rustredriver.com/blog/20250310-cyberia-source-code-as-narrative.html
the programmers refusal to engage with their identity as a writer renders it impossible to see their own use of language as artistic. It can only exist as assembly-line machine-like production, because all you can do is "make more words" to accomplish any of your goals@kalviter @zzt Code is a form of communication that must both deliver clear instructions to the computer *and* explain itself to other humans, so that the software can be understood, maintained and improved. (And help programmers learn, ideally.)
LLMs are an assault on not just art, but all communication. (Art to me is about communicating the ineffable / indescribable, like sharing feelings themselves instead of just a discussion about feelings.)
Alternately, communication is an art.
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every long-running personal project I’ve ever done has been built on code I consider beautiful
I design fucking languages and frameworks on the basis that I’ve found a more aesthetically pleasing way to do something, because if I find it beautiful then it’s probably worth doing
the only time I write ugly code is when I’m forced to by my employer or when I’m solving a problem that shouldn’t exist
what does that tell you about your code, asshole?
please, computer touchers, sneak into art school and befriend even a single artist
art and the process that goes into making it isn’t at all like what you think it is
if you think art can’t serve a function or that it doesn’t take a fuckton of planning and work, you’ll be fucking shocked by what you’ll learn working alongside artists
what you learn will make you a better person
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please, computer touchers, sneak into art school and befriend even a single artist
art and the process that goes into making it isn’t at all like what you think it is
if you think art can’t serve a function or that it doesn’t take a fuckton of planning and work, you’ll be fucking shocked by what you’ll learn working alongside artists
what you learn will make you a better person
@zzt I'm obviously biased by my own experiences but I do believe that the fact that my game dev college course had two mandatory units on art (2d and 3d) benefitted me greatly. I also took an optional unit on introduction to UI/UX design, freaking loved it
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as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
it feels unfair that I know so many people who agonize over beautiful code and suffer from imposter syndrome but this little fucker from nvidia can argue against the existence of beauty in what we do because capital demands it and his disdain for what he does reinforces it
code is art, and LLM code is ugly, regardless of what capital wants https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/116424732252818630
@zzt To me, writing beautiful code is very related to writing clean and elegant code, which I would sincerely hope that we all try to do to the best of our abilities and time constraints. Having read other people's code, I'm aware that not everyone enjoys dividing their code into neat sections that are easy to follow or commenting their code, but it makes review and maintenance so much easier! And it also looks nice.
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as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
it feels unfair that I know so many people who agonize over beautiful code and suffer from imposter syndrome but this little fucker from nvidia can argue against the existence of beauty in what we do because capital demands it and his disdain for what he does reinforces it
code is art, and LLM code is ugly, regardless of what capital wants https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/116424732252818630
@zzt I don't really care about the "art" label for code, but maybe that's because I find debates around it exhausting for all other types of art, too. People always seem to want what is art, as if art is some label that confers value: "you're allowed to enjoy this".
There's certainly a creative process to creating code, it communicates and evokes, etc etc. So no matter what, OP is wrong/disingenuous/reductive (see also my reply https://mas.to/@nielsa/116424841059102047)
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please, computer touchers, sneak into art school and befriend even a single artist
art and the process that goes into making it isn’t at all like what you think it is
if you think art can’t serve a function or that it doesn’t take a fuckton of planning and work, you’ll be fucking shocked by what you’ll learn working alongside artists
what you learn will make you a better person
@zzt Say what you will about the furry fandom but there are a LOT of coders and just as many artists, writers and musicians, and the hate for AI is shared by both communities because they know full well the amount of work that goes into traditional creative works and coding alike, and the people being robbed to feed the machine are their friends.
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we exist in a world with poetry
where the way words are organized is part of the beauty
how can the same not apply to code?
do you not have eyes?
@zzt Wordpress used to have “code is poetry” in the footer. I wonder what people would think of that today.
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as much as I hate the industry surrounding it, I cannot imagine hating my own craft so much that I’d ever reduce it to this
it feels unfair that I know so many people who agonize over beautiful code and suffer from imposter syndrome but this little fucker from nvidia can argue against the existence of beauty in what we do because capital demands it and his disdain for what he does reinforces it
code is art, and LLM code is ugly, regardless of what capital wants https://nondeterministic.computer/@mjg59/116424732252818630
@zzt people like this are the ones that build functions with 20 parameters and they don’t give a fuck if they had to add another one just to finish whatever shitty task they have to do. They never stop and think “does this feel right, does this makes sense, does this code flow in a way that is pleasing and works as intended?”
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@moses_izumi @kalviter @zzt I really do both and it uses almost the same parts of my brain!
This has recently been confirmed by studies : high levels of software engineering proficiency are strongly correlated with prose and linguistic proficiency, but only at the higher levels.
It makes sense when you consider the proficiency curve; initially you treat it as scary machine code or an alien language and don’t try to understand, but once you reach proficiency you “just read”, so why wouldn’t the converse be the same? -
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