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@hongminhee so, I guess this is true, but maybe also the craft changes?

I am old enough to remember when it was common to embed blocks of assembly language in your C code to optimize particular functions or loops. As high level languages grew, that familiarity with hardware architecture has mostly disappeared, but we've developed other skills instead.

When I read @jesse or @simon 's posts about exploring collaboration with LLMs, I see curiosity, creativity and joy in the craft.

@evan@cosocial.ca Totally agree, and I think that’s actually the point the essay is trying to make. The split isn’t “LLM users vs. craft lovers” but something more like “people with room to choose how they use the tools vs. people who don’t have that room.”

@mitchellh@hachyderm.io is a good example. He’s clearly using LLMs as a craftsperson. So am I, I think. But both of us are in situations where we’re not being measured against a colleague’s output every quarter. The workplace dynamic is what compresses all of that curiosity and exploration into pure throughput.

The craft probably does survive, just not evenly distributed.

@hongminhee Fantastic article. 👏 👏

I think there's one possible ray of light for the "code as craft" people - at least a subset of them. To me the craft'ers can enjoy coding for various reasons - the demo-scene folks, the "get it into the smallest amount of code" folks, the aesthetic folks.

But another camp is the "make it easy to understand and extend" folks - and that's pretty much where I fall. People like me, who like arranging things neatly, have had a great advantage for the last few decades, because tidy code is good for industry. There's a reason @mfowler 's Refactoring book is such a big seller.

What I'd argue we don't know for sure yet, is whether readable code as a valuable thing for the industry, is dead. The LLM extremists would probably say it is. But that only works if the only form of validation of code is going to be external (testing & observability, basically). I argue that if humans will still be required to "review" (whatever that ends up meaning) at least some code, then readable code is going to be advantageous.

Even if LLMs can produce readable code we still need human judgment, but for me judgment skills will come from doing, and not just reviewing. In other words, there'll still be an economic case for "developing by hand".

If I'm wrong, and external validation does become sufficient for judging code, then all bets are off. But in that situation I don't think the LLMs will end up writing code as we know it anyway - why would they? They will write whatever uses the least tokens and gets to a valid result most cheaply. Which could be in assembler.