I've absolutely engaged in making personal software [0] thanks to the age of LLMs.

But to be honest, my time using Emacs didn't teach me to "build personal software". My Emacs set up was extremely brittle, and it was a nightmare when I tried to use it across Windows & macOS. My university project was written using an unholy combination of org-mode & some workflow to create a beautiful LaTeX file, and I couldn't tell you how to recompile it (if I were to try, I'd probably get an LLM to literally translate it to LaTeX).

I want my life to have as little maintenance as possible, and making my own software for everything isn't always compatible with that.

[0]: A rewrite of a NETFX application in Rust, simply because the 20 minute installation time irked me: https://github.com/bevan-philip/wlan-optimizer

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iLemming 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> I want my life to have as little maintenance as possible

I honestly can't even relate to what that even means. I'm a programmer - my everyday job is all about changing the behavior of computer systems - local, remote, cloud, embedded, etc. Requirements change, scope fluctuates, problem space evolves - grows and shrinks, accretion is unavoidable. I need to routinely move between language stacks, different data types, formats, CLI and web tools, protocols, paradigms, OSS and proprietary apps.

That means I have to constantly adapt, my control plane has to keep up with the flux. Automation is key - you must develop a mentality for that - every little annoyance can be and shall be automated. That is an endless, non-stop transformation of my workflow - continuous maintenance of my tooling. But that is not some toilsome, reactive maintenance.

Thinking that you're a programmer that doesn't want to constantly build software for your own sake is a delusion - it's like a cook that hopes to turn on the stove only in the restaurant, but won't touch a knife at home.

Emacs is the cook's home kitchen. I'd say there are two kinds of maintenance: reactive (fixing breakage, keeping up with churn) versus generative (shaping tools to match your evolving understanding). Programmers instinctively dislike the first and should be drawn to the second. Emacs is almost uniquely suited to generative maintenance because the tool and the work share the same substrate.

I get your complaint about Emacs specifically, it's a common: "too much work to set up", which usually means: "I don't want to invest before I get value", which honestly is not wise, strategic thinking. Treating Emacs as the universal tool for minimizing total maintenance burden over a career, over a lifetime is.

	▲	peacebeard 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		To summarize: your claim is that choosing to spend your energy on anything other than your emacs setup is a catastrophic failure in terms of ROI, a delusion, and a sort of dereliction of identity as a programmer. My rebuttal: dude, relax.

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e40 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have had the same emacs setup on linux, windows and macos for 15 years. Honestly, it's the best thing in my computing life.

	▲	ubermonkey 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Paralleling Linux and MacOS is pretty simple, but the last time I tried to make the same config work properly in Windows it was a nightmare b/c of the path issues.

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4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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TacticalCoder 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I want my life to have as little maintenance as possible, and making my own software for everything isn't always compatible with that.

So LLMs are good enough to make personal software, but not good enough to maintain them?

	▲	MrJohz 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's usually easier to build something that maintain it for extended periods of time, particularly if that maintenance requires adding new features.
	▲	shaokind 14 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Less about the capabilities of LLM software, but more about my willingness to spend time to deploy them, debug them, etc. I don't want to spend time on dealing with change. Hence why I'd rather purchase tools, where I pay for the developer to a) prepare for any maintenance, and b) will perform the maintenance needed. (Of course, the maintainability of software with current generation LLMs depends a lot on how well your architecture them. I've got pure vibe coded slop, that can be very difficult to wrangle.)
	▲	virgil_disgr4ce 44 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> So LLMs are good enough to make personal software, but not good enough to maintain them? I mean... yes? Maintaining software means looking at issues opened on github, keeping your own list of feature requests and bug fixes, deciding if and what to fix, deciding when to fix, and if you're lucky/cursed, reviewing PRs from randos. ANY of this means diverting attention from your day job/client work/kids/???. Can some of this be theoretically automated by an LLM? Uh, maybe? But I'm not sure how much that would help.

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d0mine 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“Those who say they lack time to build tools are precisely the ones who cannot afford not to.”