Comment on Indie devs have begun adding a no generative AI stamp to their store pages
chaos@beehaw.org 4 days agoThe irony is that most programmers were just googling and getting answers from stackoverflow, now they don’t even need to Google.
That’s the thing, though, doing that still requires you to read the answer, understand it, and apply it to the thing you’re doing, because the answer probably isn’t tailored to your exact task. Doing this work is how you develop an understanding of what’s going on in your language, your libraries, and your own code. An experienced developer has built up those mental muscles, and can probably get away with letting an AI do the tedious stuff, but more novice developers will be depriving themselves of learning what they’re actually doing if they let the AI handle the easy things, and they’ll be helpless to figure out the things that the AI can’t do.
Going from assembly to C does put the programmer at some distance from the reality of the computer, and I’d argue that if you haven’t at least dipped into some assembly and at least understand the basics of what’s actually going on down there, your computer science education is incomplete. But once you have that understanding, it’s okay to let the computer handle the tedium for you and only dip down to that level if necessary. Or learning sorting algorithms, versus just using your standard library’s sort() function, same thing. AI falls into that category too, I’d argue, but it’s so attractive that I worry it’s treating important learning as tedium and helping people skip it.
I’m all for making programming simpler, for lowering barriers and increasing accessibility, but there’s a risk there too. Obviously wheelchairs are good things, but using one simply “because it’s easier” and not because you need to will cause your legs to atrophy, or never develop strength in the first place, and I’m worried there’s a similar thing going on with AI in programming. “I don’t want to have to think about this” isn’t a healthy attitude to have, a program is basically a collection of crystallized thoughts and ideas, thinking it through is a critical part of the process.
Lemjukes@lemm.ee 3 days ago
I know you’re replying to a reply here, but do people think I mean just putting in a prompt and then running the output and calling that something I made?
I’ve spent years trying to teach myself how to code but always inevitably would lose track of some part or get stuck on some bug or issue I alone couldn’t get past. I went to theatre school for chrissakes and I just wanna make games and silly little projects. I don’t have any friends in this field and pestering random people in discords or on stack overflow can be really annoying for those people.
So why is using an ai assistant I can berate with as many terse questions I want to iterate code that’d I’d normally spend hours struggling just to remember and string together, such a big stick people are putting up their butts?
chaos@beehaw.org 3 days ago
I’ll acknowledge that there’s definitely an element of “well I had to do it the hard way, you should too” at work with some people, and I don’t want to make that argument. Code is also not nearly as bad as something like image generation, where it’s literally just typing a thing and getting a not-very-good image back that’s ready to go; I’m sure if you’re making playable games, you’re putting in more work than that because it’s just not possible to type some words and get a game out of it. You’ll have to use your brain to get it right. And if you’re happy with the results you get and the work you’re doing, I’m definitely not going to tell you you’re doing it wrong.
(If you’re trying to make a career of software engineering or have a desire to understand it at a deeper level, I’d argue that relying heavily on AI might be more of a hindrance to those goals than you know, but if those aren’t your goals, who cares? Have fun with it.)
What I’m talking about is a bigger picture thing than you and your games; it’s the industry as a whole. Much like algorithmic timelines have had the effect of turning the internet from something you actively explored into something you passively let wash over you, I’m worried that AI is creating a “do the thinking for me” button that’s going to be too tempting for people to use responsibly, and will result in too much code becoming a bunch of half-baked AI slop cobbled together by people who don’t understand what they’re really doing. There’s already enough cargo culting around software, and AI will just make it more opaque and mysterious if overused and over-relied on. But that’s a bigger picture thing; just like I’m not above laying back and letting TikTok wash over me sometimes, I’m glad you’re doing things you like with the assistance you get. I just don’t want that to become the only way things happen either.
Lemjukes@lemm.ee 3 days ago
thanks for the thoughtful reply. I’m in the first boat of just wanting to make games and other small, self driven projects. I think its mostly the feeling of being excluded from participating in things like game jams and the larger game development community because I use a specific tool.
In an effort to clarify what i think is an example of something like a middle ground between no AI code gen period and as you put it “do the thinking for me” let me see if i can put it in similar terms. Instead of “do it for me” its very much so a back and forth of “i want this behavior when these conditions are met for this function and expect these types of outcomes.” Copilot then generates code referencing the rest of the codebase as reference and i then usually manually copy and paste chunks over to the working files and then compile & run from there for testing.
I definitely agree that over reliance on tools as a means of masking a real understanding of a subject is a genuine problem. And I too hope it doesnt end up having the same kind of effect algorithmic social media has had on society as a whole. But i think i do have hope that it will enable a subset of people like me who struggle with the wrote memorization aspects of computer programming but still desires the thrill of putting some pieces together and watching it work.
chaos@beehaw.org 3 days ago
Yeah, totally fair. I’ll note that you’re kind of describing the typical software development process of a customer talking to the developer and developing requirements collaboratively with them, then the developer coming back with a demo, the customer refining by going “oh, that won’t work, it needs to do it this way” or “that reminds me, it also needs to do this”, and so on. But you’re closer to playing the role of the customer in this scenario, and acting like more of an editor or manager on the development side. The organizers of a game jam could make a reasonable argument that doing it this way is akin to signing up for the game jam, coming up with an idea, then having your friend who isn’t signed up for the game jam implement it for you, when the point is to do it all in person, quickly, in a fun and energetic environment. The people doing a game jam like coding, that’s the fun part for them, so someone signing up and skipping all that stuff does have a little bit of a “why are you even here then” aspect to it. Of course it depends on the degree the AI is being used, how much editorial control or tweaking you’re doing, it’s a legitimate debate and I don’t think you’re wrong to want to participate.