The joy has to come from the process. Something I struggle with greatly.

Boo! making has to be fun

This is how you get ai slop

I haven't finished a thing
since I started my life
I don't feel much like starting now

I find it low key heart breaking to see how many people say they "need" genAI or LLMs to create art, or program. It feels like a form of learned helplessness.

Making something feels like the closest thing to actual magic. For me, especially programming has this magic to it, where you literally spend a bit of your lifetime, willing something to existence.

And it's not always fun. But overcoming the un-fun means I managed a small struggle, and created a new part of myself.

Unless you're an artist that can't sell their work, then it the other way around. The joy of creation is stifled by the looming mass of past creations.

I struggle with this a lot myself as a web developer because I frankly hate LLMs having sucked the soul out of my work.

But on the other hand after a few years of using them (at work) I can now hand it a problem, let it go in auto mode then review its code — when I do it’s now at the level that its output looks pretty much exactly how I would’ve written it.

So now I give it rather simple tasks or bug fixes to work on while I focus on writing new features mostly by hand.

I still feel incredibly guilty for using it due to ethical, environmental concerns as well as the feeling that I am becoming less intelligent overall. I can’t imagine being a new junior developer trying to learn new concepts while being pushed to have LLMs solve all the problems.

Um, excuse me. Hi. Yeah, for a lot of people:

Pros: Making and setting up perfectly.

Cons: Thing to store.

Huh. As an artist and crafter, I feel the exact opposite. It's the "making" that's the fun part. A lot of times I don't aim to make anything specific - I'm just playing around for the hell of it. Then whatever I'm working on starts reminding me of something else, and that's when the "thing" begins to become defined.

For example, one time I was playing with a multi-tonal yarn, crocheting without any real goal, and the spotted pattern it was making reminded me of a dog. So I turned it into a scarf - a scarf that looked like an extremely long dog, with face, paws, tail and all. Even gave it a pink little tongue dangling out of its silly, happy mouth. It pretty much lives in my car, because I almost never wear scarves - but it looks cute wrapped around the passenger seat's headrest.

Making patterns from the noise is my favorite part of art. I don't make in order to "have things," I make in order to exercise creativity. It's extremely fulfilling in and of itself. Is that... is that not how most artists feel?

Or are the "creators" in this post people who turned their hobby into an obligation, and subsequently sucked all joy out of the process?

(Sometimes people ask me why I don't sell things/have an Etsy store, and in that case I'll call this entire post Exhibit A.)

Agreed.

Pro: Make

Con: Thing

I like watching people doing woodwork and the stuff they make, but i don't have the time to learn how to woodwork nor the skill to do so, so i went to a furniture shop and place an order for four chairs and a table, within hour they deliver it to my home. Making furniture had never been easier, no skill needed, no lenghty time required, no more spending years to hone the skill just to make a simple chair, i just pay and in just an hour i made a dinning table set just like that, and it's cheaper to do so. I believe this is the future, if woodworker doesn't learn how to integrate it into their workflow they will be left out very soon.

As a maker I’m offended. This is like someone who doesn’t understand art explaining art. If you buy something you get to experience the joy to going from I-don’t-have-thing to I-have-thing. As a maker, you get a second layer, I-create-thing. It’s a joy. Its stimulation. It’s something I get to do without a fucking ad in my face.

Only if you believe in the cause. There's not much joy in being a contractor for someone else's product. You just deliver the bare minimum agreed upon, get paid and carry on to the next one.

Not always.

I like art. I like making "art". I dislike the process, finding it tiring and hard, but get enormous joy when I finish the thing and it's to my standard.

...but also found AI is shit at giving me the sams joy so I still struggle on xD