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dave@dthompson@toot.cat (2026-10-07 02:22:48)
I think we shouldn't say "handcrafted" or whatever when talking about LLM opposition. It does a disservice to our arguments and it's used against us by LLM boosters frequently.
Handcrafted vs. mass production is a false equivalence. LLMs are not the IKEA of software as their products are created with precision. Writing code without LLMs is not using hand tools instead of power tools. I use efficient and precise power tools when I'm woodworking and when I'm programming. I cut rabbet joints on my table saw instead of cutting dovetails with a hand saw. I use Emacs instead of Notepad.
LLMs are something else entirely because they are inherently probabilistic black boxes and they're extremely inefficient at what they do. I can set my rip fence and make the same exact cut a million times on my table saw whereas an LLM is more like using a slot machine.
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---Replies---
Jens Finkhäuser@jens@social.finkhaeuser.de (2026-10-07 02:27:33)
@dthompson IKEA in previous decades was crafted with precision. Modern IKEA is more slop-like. I have several decades of Ivar to compare, and the trend is clearly downhill.
dave@dthompson@toot.cat (2026-10-07 02:37:09)
this post brought to you by lobste.rs being mad at me in the comments
Julian Andres Klode 🏳️🌈@juliank@mastodon.social (2026-10-07 02:40:08)
@dthompson argument will only hold until the IKEA products are created by LLMs
aeva@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place (2026-10-07 02:47:14)
@dthompson I think there's linguistic drift going on here that's not especially new. I'm reminded of a conversation I had about ten years ago where I had made an offhand remark about doing something "by hand" as meaning I wasn't automating the task entirely, but I was still doing it on the computer and the person I was talking to thought that was really funny because their conception of doing something "by hand" would not normally include doing it on a computer at all.
dave@dthompson@toot.cat (2026-10-07 21:53:28)
and hey look an article published yesterday with a similar woodworking analogy https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/05-software-developers-are-not-okay#software-developers-are-not-doing-well