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AI Coding Tools Spark Carpenter-Power Tool Debate

Open-source advocate Eric Raymond draws an analogy between today's AI coding debates and 1940s carpenters opposing power tools.

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6 Sources, 20d ago, first seen 20d ago

TLDR

Eric S. Raymond posted an imagined 1940s scene of carpenters picketing with signs reading STOP POWER TOOLS while noting that power tools enabled new work previously impossible or too costly. He stated the post targeted resistance to AI coding assistants and confirmed he performed historical research before writing it. Scott Manley replied questioning how coding models trained on open source code with licenses meant to keep derivatives open. Other visible replies discussed opportunity costs of new tools and questioned whether AI functions as a precision instrument or produces sloppy results.

Combined views

174.1K

6 Sources, first seen 20d ago

3.8K likes317 comments518 saves467 reposts
Featured Source

Combined views

174.1K

6 Sources, first seen 20d ago

3.8K likes317 comments518 saves467 reposts

Sentiment

Positive22.9%77.1%Negative

Based on 38 sentiment-bearing replies from 35 accounts across 2 conversations.

Sentiment

Positive22.9%77.1%Negative

Based on 38 sentiment-bearing replies from 35 accounts across 2 conversations.

6 Sources

@esrtweetImagine it's the 1940s. You're a carpenter. Power tools are beginning to replace hand tools for ordinary work. Furthermore, jobs that would have been impossible or ruinously expensive are suddenly within reach. You show up at a worksite one fine morning and it's being picketed. STOP POWER TOOLS! the signs say. WOODWORKING UNDER THREAT! Puzzled, you accost one of the demonstrators and ask him why he has a signboard in his hand rather than tools. "Power tools are a menace!" he says. "How are you going to train apprentices if they can't feel the wood through their hands?" "What happens when we can chew through aged quality timber faster than we can grow new trees?" "Carpentry isn't just a set of skills and habits, it's a mindset. It won't be any true carpenters left if we let this go on." You inquire further and discover that they have plans. Plans to exclude from any job they work on any craftsman who has ever used a power tool or even spoken approvingly about them. Meanwhile, inside the picket line, a house is going up. Men are working. Cutting and joining the framing is going faster than you could have imagined 10 years ago. You look at the workers. You look at the demonstrators. One group is talking. The other is getting stuff done. One group looks like the past, the other like the future. In this moment, you get to decide which group you're going to join. This post was not about carpentry.20d
@Devon_Eriksen_People who object to new, more powerful tools don't generally understand the concept of opportunity cost. If I have a nailgun, then the time I once spent driving nails with a hammer doesn't sit idle. I use it for other things. If I have nailguns and power drills and miter saws, and I can put up a house faster, I don't build the same number of houses and then sit idle and unpaid. I build more houses. And houses become cheaper, because I spend less time and money building each. So the demand for houses goes up, because more people can afford them. Now I'm busier than I ever was, building houses. Which means that someone else has to take on the demo jobs, tearing down all the apartment buildings so they can be replaced with parks. Every technological advancement obsoletes skills. If you think this is bad instead of good, then try giving up some of the technology that is familiar to you, that was already in the world you were born into, and see if it makes your life better or worse. No. No one wants to go back to banging the rocks together. What people are really afraid of isn't change, it's the unknown. They don't know what the new tools will be good for, or how they will change our world. What if it's bad? But to refuse the unknown because it might be bad is to refuse all change, all growth, all progress, all exploration. Let's stick to being afraid of things that actually are bad, instead of everything that could possibly be.20d
@ClassicGamerTWRIf we were using AI as a tool, I would 100% agree with Eric. But we’re not. We’re pretending it’s a precision C&C machine when it’s the most Rube Goldberg way to produce sloppy work in existence. The edges are sloppy. The cuts are sloppy. The precision is all over the place. And we say that’s fine because customers are getting what they want. Meanwhile, customer are unhappy and having an absolutely shitty experience because… the edges are sloppy, the cuts are sloppy, and the precision is all over the place. AI tools are not going away. Nor do I want them too. But the psychotic belief in their superiority at producing software in place of an engineer coding will go down in history as one of our poorest moments of judgement.20d
@DJSnM@esrtweet As a long time open source advocate I can’t remember if you’ve weighed in on the fact that the coding models are good partly because they trained on open source software with licenses that are supposed to keep derivative works open.20d
@boriquagatomembership in the "workers against productivity" movement is one of the great acid tests for second order economic thinking. imagine what food would cost if we had banned tractors to save farm jobs.20d
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    Eric S. Raymond

    6 Sources

    @esrtweetImagine it's the 1940s. You're a carpenter. Power tools are beginning to replace hand tools for ordinary work. Furthermore, jobs that would have been impossible or ruinously expensive are suddenly within reach. You show up at a worksite one fine morning and it's being picketed. STOP POWER TOOLS! the signs say. WOODWORKING UNDER THREAT! Puzzled, you accost one of the demonstrators and ask him why he has a signboard in his hand rather than tools. "Power tools are a menace!" he says. "How are you going to train apprentices if they can't feel the wood through their hands?" "What happens when we can chew through aged quality timber faster than we can grow new trees?" "Carpentry isn't just a set of skills and habits, it's a mindset. It won't be any true carpenters left if we let this go on." You inquire further and discover that they have plans. Plans to exclude from any job they work on any craftsman who has ever used a power tool or even spoken approvingly about them. Meanwhile, inside the picket line, a house is going up. Men are working. Cutting and joining the framing is going faster than you could have imagined 10 years ago. You look at the workers. You look at the demonstrators. One group is talking. The other is getting stuff done. One group looks like the past, the other like the future. In this moment, you get to decide which group you're going to join. This post was not about carpentry.20d
    @Devon_Eriksen_People who object to new, more powerful tools don't generally understand the concept of opportunity cost. If I have a nailgun, then the time I once spent driving nails with a hammer doesn't sit idle. I use it for other things. If I have nailguns and power drills and miter saws, and I can put up a house faster, I don't build the same number of houses and then sit idle and unpaid. I build more houses. And houses become cheaper, because I spend less time and money building each. So the demand for houses goes up, because more people can afford them. Now I'm busier than I ever was, building houses. Which means that someone else has to take on the demo jobs, tearing down all the apartment buildings so they can be replaced with parks. Every technological advancement obsoletes skills. If you think this is bad instead of good, then try giving up some of the technology that is familiar to you, that was already in the world you were born into, and see if it makes your life better or worse. No. No one wants to go back to banging the rocks together. What people are really afraid of isn't change, it's the unknown. They don't know what the new tools will be good for, or how they will change our world. What if it's bad? But to refuse the unknown because it might be bad is to refuse all change, all growth, all progress, all exploration. Let's stick to being afraid of things that actually are bad, instead of everything that could possibly be.20d
    @ClassicGamerTWRIf we were using AI as a tool, I would 100% agree with Eric. But we’re not. We’re pretending it’s a precision C&C machine when it’s the most Rube Goldberg way to produce sloppy work in existence. The edges are sloppy. The cuts are sloppy. The precision is all over the place. And we say that’s fine because customers are getting what they want. Meanwhile, customer are unhappy and having an absolutely shitty experience because… the edges are sloppy, the cuts are sloppy, and the precision is all over the place. AI tools are not going away. Nor do I want them too. But the psychotic belief in their superiority at producing software in place of an engineer coding will go down in history as one of our poorest moments of judgement.20d
    @DJSnM@esrtweet As a long time open source advocate I can’t remember if you’ve weighed in on the fact that the coding models are good partly because they trained on open source software with licenses that are supposed to keep derivative works open.20d
    @boriquagatomembership in the "workers against productivity" movement is one of the great acid tests for second order economic thinking. imagine what food would cost if we had banned tractors to save farm jobs.20d
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