I still write code by hand. But LLMs have been a legitimately useful tool when I've wanted to dig into a new field like computer graphics, theoretical physics, or numerical analysis. Or even just asking the LLM to write a piece of code and learning from its output. I think it makes me a better programmer because I can bootstrap the knowledge needed for a new project much faster and spend more time programming.

Meanwhile, the economy needs software to be written and I need employment, and I'm lucky enough to have a job that hews somewhat close to my interests, whether that be learning the latest JS framework or to prompt Claude. It's all pretty decent and better than chiselling coal out of a pit for 10 hours a day.

Many of us here can wax nostalgic on our first memories of a computer in our home. And when we look at the current slab now in front of us with a little less wonder, it's easy to dismiss this as us having grown up with the machines, having become older, perhaps even a little jaded. That spark is gone?

It's also possible though that the machines now just aren't the same as the ones we grew up with.

Personally, I remember beginning to dislike computers a little when I was suddenly tasked with remembering passwords. At first it was simply to log into my machine (didn't need to do that on Mac System 6.0). Then when the internet came along, suddenly it became something of a chore using the machine…

After working 25+ years at Apple, when I finally retired, people have asked me since if I miss working at Apple. I have to tell them "no and yes". I don't miss working at Apple in the 2010's or the 2020's (when I finally retired). I do however miss working at Apple in the 90's, when I began. It was a very different time to be working at Apple. I miss it and have been missing it for several decades now.

This line hits really close to home. :-/

But it's also because we are getting older, and we are romanizing those sleepless nights getting 3D acceleration to work in Slackware with Dropline Gnome. Our first chat experiences, first emails, IRC, making your first website, getting your first server online...

It's easy to think that the weary giants of steel messed up our beloved internet, and they certainly took a large share of it (and indeed messed it up). But our internet is still there, faster and better than ever, and there are still social spaces naturally independent of the tyrannies they seek to impose on us. When I go to i.e. FOSDEM I feel that feeling from my youth, it's still very much there.

Ok, it is very annoying that they are messing with the prices of our hardware and I feel that. But that will pass. Perhaps in a year or so we get a wrinkle effect and stuff will be cheap for some time. And we can do "AI" our way (on our terms and hardware).

Let's not get so negative, just try to ignore the negative things and focus on the positive (like my gigabit symmetrical connection whoop whoop, yes it has cgNAT but I have WireGuard).

then at some point, the balance started tipping.

Things I specifically remember:

- half life required you to register online to install your single-player game from CD

- turbotax would only install on one computer.

- software started rooting around on your system and uploading the findings

- the iphone didn't let you install your own software

- microsoft. enough said.

I can't say the feeling remains because most new stuff that I learn now is not runnable on my machine now. Tech has gone back to the days when owning hardware that's capable of running the latest has become a costly affair.

I get the way he feels. I remember how special this stuff used to be because of how niche it was. It does feel a bit like the normies co-opted it but that is my personal and selfish view.

Exactly my first attempt to "convert to .exe" as well :) Browsing through C:\DOTS, I discovered qbasic.exe (a QuickBasic variant without a compiler) and wanted to "compile" (as I now know is the right term) my first, wonky five-liner.

Only later I learned that this, ehat I was missing in the analog world back then, was what made up the core of a turing machine.

So this beauty is still the same for me. Just the sheer amount of state that is available and provided by others make the concept much less powerful than back in the day.

Now AI brings that back a bit, by finding the right items that you can keep and iterate on. But we tend to let AI also do rhe iteration and that introduces that non-deterministic character that the computer had overcome.

So, no wonder, that I, and quite a few others, at the moment, still mostly use AI for finding and typing code to describe the structures for the machine, but keep trying to define the iterations ourselves, guaranteeing clear insight and access to the state we are trying to work with.

Everything else is more like working with an assistant back then (or today), extending your actionable potential instean of your mind. And depending on how you see the world or what the tasl at hand might be, you might prefer one over the other, control over action, insight and perspective over tinkering with the matter to push it somehow in the right direction or implementing a known process.

But that state thing, still priceless, timeless. The right augmentation to our fuzzy brains and better than paper, since, who thought, we can express the algorithms in the same way.

So, I guess I will always see this beauty, even in a simple flip-flop, coin, switch and any array thereof, and anything that can be controlled by that binary configuration.

Glad to hear I’m not alone in these kind of early experiments. I remember having no idea what the concept of programming actually was, and opening game EXEs in notepad to try and understand how they worked. The demo of Majesty was one I particularly wanted to modify and had no idea how

I also love the Computer AND the Internet, allowing me to interact with and experience the world like this.

This is something LLMs took away from me. I can’t just look at the source code and figure out why a prompt didn’t produce the expected outcome. I have to go with my gut feeling, and with the little I know about LLMs.

On the other hand, LLMs have enabled me to code prototypes that I would have only dreamed about a few years ago.

Do you want your own fancy terminal emulator? Done. A couple of weekends’ worth of work.

How about your own Linux windowing system, running Firefox and a terminal? Done. A couple more weekends.

You always hated KiCad routing, but never had time to go through the code and change it to meet your requirements? No worries. A day’s work.

Of course, none of this is production quality, but it gets you started very fast. And I’m sure you can turn it into a solid, production-quality product in much less time than it would take without using an LLM.

Nothing will take that away. I have plenty of evidence for it, too.

I think those of us who truly love the mechanism will not only survive the AI wave but will surf that motherfucker because WE KNOW, AT A VERY DEEP LEVEL, THE THING FROM WHENCE IT CAME.

(and honestly, I’ve been waiting for something like this to help filter out all the fucking posers diluting my market value)

I remember when I was around 10 and we got out first PC - Compaq Presario - that we shared among us 4 siblings. And I was instantly hooked to. And then about a year later, we got internet connected and the first website we visited was Pokemon.

I remember at my high school, the computer room in the library was fitted out with the new colored iMacs. I was shocked! How could a computer look like this. You had to register to use it each day during lunch breaks because so many people wanted to use them.

I remember the first time I came across an Apple magazine, and it was showing screenshots of the new OS X. The Aqua interface got me hooked. I'd read, and re-read, every page, drooling over the screenshots. It wasn't until ~10 years later I got my first Mac and I was obsessed with it!

it took me a decade from falling in love with pc building to finally build one for myself. the crypto bros ruined it earlier, then now the crankers. both underlying tech is amazing. but any interesting idea or "breakthrough" trigger a gold rush mania.

same with the people working in certain parts of the globe. we were compensated disproportionately compared to other industries, thanks to the above tailwind and ZIRP.

i wonder how many people in the industry would be there if it wasn't the "future", at least in putting zeroes in our bank balance. personally would have not been here if not for the money, but would still have love for computers themselves and what we can do with thme.

But this day, I dabble with OpenBSD and Linux (Alpine) and it’s a bit of fresh air. There’s some convenience lost, but you get the freedom of computing back.