Why is everyone calling LLM generated code "written from scratch" with almost no clue that they didn't write one line of code themselves? Yeah, it was written from scratch, but not by you!!
Projects like these are defiling the programmer's guild.
Why is everyone calling LLM generated code "written from scratch" with almost no clue that they didn't write one line of code themselves? Yeah, it was written from scratch, but not by you!!
Projects like these are defiling the programmer's guild.
ArtCraft says it’s all written from scratch as well.
ArtCraft lies. It makes extensive use of crates, which to me defeats the "from scratch" argument. The whole point of doing it from scratch is that you get full control of every line of code in the compiled binary.
https://github.com/rfgplk/micron.cpp
This is an example of a true "from scratch implementation" (as long as you target the freestanding compile option, hosted still depends on pthread for threading). Absolutely zero external code or references anywhere outside the stated repo. (Not even compiler builtins or includes are needed). You can drag and drop it wherever you'd like hit compile and you're done.
"Written from scratch" just means that no external code or existing libraries were used in producing something. Nowadays it's preferable to reusing code/crates/whatever because a) you avoid supply side attacks b) the implementation is likely going to be more correct and performant than alternatives c) it's actually easier to write your own thing than to download an existing lib and wrangle it into your project.
Why does it matter? Tbh at this point if frontier models are used I would place more trust in the average codebase than the average pre-AI codebase.
There are outliers where an excellent team of devs produce great quality, better that even frontier LLM code now. SQLite comes to mind. But it's easy to forget that is the 0.x%.
the comment isn't even about the quality, it's about the "from scratch" aspect (used to 'market' it)
But isn't that correct? It doesn't seem to be based on anything, or am I missing something?
Or is it "To make an apple pie, you must first invent the universe" kind of deal. Which doesn't make sense to me either.
If you hired a chef to come to your house and make a pie from scratch, would you then share the pie with your friends and tell them that you made it from scratch?
No I wouldn't, but that is not really what happened here. If someone used a bread making robot and put the ingredients in there and it made bread most people would have no problem saying they made bread from scratch. In the same vein people say "I did the laundry" or "I did the dishes" but in both cases the real work is often done by a laundry machine or dishwasher.
In the same way a program manager is free to say "We build X from scratch" even though they made no code contribution to it. The we is replaced with I since no other person was involved in this case.
> most people would have no problem saying they made bread from scratch
That's fine for bread, but for people that see code more like art, they have a preconceived notion that "from scratch" means writing the code yourself.
Some people code to solve a problem and they don't care how it gets done. They have no problems using AI and see other methods as prehistoric. That's fine for them, carry on.
For me, the journey is more important than the destination.
Being able to code "by hand" is what strokes my sense of worth and accomplishment... knowing I can do something that not just anyone can. Pushing a button or prompting an AI isn't the same for me, that's more like a project manager and something I never want to be.
When people bash on the anti-AI crowd, they just don't understand that people code for different reasons, and neither is more right or wrong.
I agree that people can write code for whatever they want, and that is valid.
Code can be art, making food can also be art. So I'm don't agree with your distinction that code is materially different from baking in that aspect.
The terminology "from scratch" and "by hand" are really not interchangeable in my opinion. "By hand" implies something about the process. "From scratch" implies something about the state before you started, not anything about the process.
A more apt analogy is heating up a frozen packaged pie, then saying it was made from scratch. Yes _you_ bought from the store, but somewhere ingredients were assembled and it was made "from scratch".
The plotline of at least one Hallmark romcom movie, as I recall. (-:
What does a vibe-coder say when he orders a dish at a restaurant and the waiter brings it to the table? "Look at the food I made!"
On the other hand: many managers love to claim to have been deeply involved in the development of some product when the actual work was done at least by their underlings, or sometimes even a completely different team.
If people were similar confrontive in calling out such managers ...
Or any project of any size -- scientists running a lab rarely do the experiments or data analysis themselves -- they have graduate students and postdocs for that. Their job is to decide what those people work on.
With the same argument, you can argue that it is the programmer's job to decide which LLM shall work on the problem, and the programmer still gets the credit for the work. :-)
Yes, that's my point -- assuming the programmer actually spent some time thinking it through.