[HN Gopher] Karpathy on Programming
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       Karpathy on Programming
        
       Author : rishabhaiover
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2025-12-26 20:12 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | rishabhaiover wrote:
       | For the longest time, the joy of creation in programming came
       | from solving hard problems. The pursuit of a challenge meant
       | something. Now, that pursuit seems to be short-circuited by an
       | animated being racing ahead under a different set of incentives.
       | I see a tsunami at the beach, and I'm not sure whether I can run
       | fast enough.
        
         | condensedcrab wrote:
         | Not to mention many companies speedrunning systems of strange
         | and/or perverse incentives with AI adoption.
         | 
         | That being said, Welch's grape juice hasn't put Napa valley out
         | of business. Human taste is still the subjective filter that
         | LLMs can only imitate, not replace.
         | 
         | I view LLM assisted coding (on the sliding scale from vibe
         | coding to fancy auto complete) similar to how Ableton and other
         | DAW software have empowered good musicians that might not have
         | made it otherwise due to lack of connections or money, but the
         | music industry hasn't collapsed completely.
        
           | tjr wrote:
           | In the music world, I would say that, rather than DAWs, LLM-
           | assisted coding is more like LLM-assisted music creation.
        
       | tjr wrote:
       | Being a nondeterministic tool, the output for a given input can
       | vary. Rather than having a solid plan of, "if I provide this
       | input, then that will happen", it's more like, "if I do something
       | like this, I can expect something like that, probably, and if
       | not, then try again until it works, I suppose".
       | 
       | What are the productivity gains? Obviously, it must vary. The
       | quality of the tool output varies based on numerous criteria,
       | including what programming language is being used and what
       | problem is trying to be solved. The fact that person A gets a 10x
       | productivity increase on their project _does not_ mean that
       | person B will also get a 10x productivity increase on their
       | project, no matter how well they use the tool.
       | 
       | But again, tool usage itself is variable. Person A themselves
       | might get a 10x boost one time, and 8x another time, and 4x
       | another time, and 2x another time.
        
       | breve wrote:
       | I'd be more interested in hearing his thoughts on the full self
       | driving lie he participated in for many years. Does he feel any
       | responsibility at all for lying to Tesla's customers? Did he
       | advocate for them to be refunded since Tesla had not and still
       | has not delivered what was promised?
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-26 23:01 UTC)