I Love the Computer

I still like the computer itself. Breaking something, poking at it, fixing it, and then it suddenly works. The hard part now is liking the industry around it.

I love computers too, but it doesn't resonate with me when people call AI "snake oil." The comparison suggests that the thing doesn't do what it's marketed to do. AI does more or less what it's marketed to do, sometimes badly.

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.

I love the computer too. Never more than while writing 6502 assembler for a decades-defunct home computer for literally no purpose at all.

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.

I think the author doesn't realize how gatekeepy this sentiment is; that they earned their love of "the computer", that it was formative to them, that they put all this uncomfortable effort into learning how to program, and thus (subtextually) they should have a say in how other people use "the computer".

For me, in the early 80s, this was all about state. Reliably keeping a state, well defined, numbers or strings, bytes preferably, and being able to act upon them.

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.

Working at FAANG made me stop liking computers. As soon as I left, it all came back.

Mr. Enger echos a lot of thoughts that I (and a lot of people on these forums) seem to have. We can still make an attempt to remake what we love, with personal websites and self-hosting. However modern architecture kills even that with DDoS attacks and IP blacklists on everything. It is no wonder that people are starting to promote alternate protocols like Gemini (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48297467) that explicitly make it impossible for many of the evils of the World Wide Web to be repeated.

This post resonates with me. I remember in Kindergarten getting my very first life experience with computing tech: grounding myself by touching the bottom screws of a Apple IIe. I've loved them in nearly the same way as OP.

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.

Computers used to have unlimited promise and potential.

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.

There's a spirit in the machine, and if you are quiet enough, and patient enough, and willing to let yourself believe, you can even heart it talk to you, long into the night.

I make computer go beep-boop. I love computer.

I think the author simply grew up. It's easy to ignore all of the business stuff and just have fun when you are kid. Nothing is stopping the author from generating all sorts of crazy stuff with AI if he wants to live on the bleeding edge of technology.

One of the main reasons I fell in love with computers was determinism. I always felt weird seeing people get upset and curse at the C++ compiler. In my mind, the “computer” will always give you the same output for the same input. Therefore, you must be doing something wrong if you’re fighting the compiler. The answer to your problems is in the source code.

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.

I love the computer, too.

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!

My first computer was a pentium II. After one year learning about computing in my school lab and friends’ computers, it was amazing to have something to tinker with. And it and its successors brought me plenty of delight over the year. First discovering Linux (with Linux Mint and Gnome 2 as I couldn’t install Debian), learning assembly and C, learning Blender, learning how windows internals worked,… It has been a tool that has shaped my life. And yes, the current trend of presenting it as a mere source of entertainment and a very small sets of features is sickening.

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.

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