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   Matthew Garrett (mjg59@nondeterministic.computer)'s status on Saturday, 18-Apr-2026 18:43:21 JST Matthew Garrett

   When I write code I am turning a creative idea into a mechanical embodiment of that idea. I am not creating beauty. Every line of code I write is a copy of another line of code I've read somewhere before, lightly modified to meet my needs. My code is not intended to evoke emotion. It does not change people think about the world. The idea→code pipeline in my head is not obviously distinguishable from the prompt->code process in an LLM

   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Garrett (mjg59@nondeterministic.computer)'s status on Saturday, 18-Apr-2026 18:43:19 JST Matthew Garrett

     in reply to

     Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.

     Steve's Place repeated this.
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     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 19-Apr-2026 11:45:49 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @mjg59 and yeah, “not like that” is actually valid, it’s just “having standards”, when “like that” is plagiaristic and error-prone and unsustainable and ecologically damaging on a world-historic scale. you don’t have to cancel every ethical principle you have so you can make a button a color you like better, even if you don’t really know how to code. you can argue that this ethical calculus is *wrong* but it is very silly indeed to pretend it’s contradictory gibberish

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     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 19-Apr-2026 11:45:50 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @mjg59 you’re doing the thing where you’re romanticizing another profession by assuming the grass is greener. most writers are not novelists. most are writing pretty dry ad copy or instruction manuals or something, just like most programmers aren’t writing especially novel or beautiful algorithms (or, for that matter, video games where algorithmic processes evoke a feeling). you’re just confusing form and content here

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 19-Apr-2026 11:47:03 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @mjg59 it sounds unconvincing to me. the plagiarism thing has to do with sustainability, not just aesthetics. software errors tend to be chaotic and compounding and thus you’d need strong edges to the sandbox where the agents were allowed to play, which we don’t have. and the “inherent”-ness is a red herring. it doesn’t matter if there’s a *pretend* version of this tech that is ethical, the real-life version we have has the problems it has, and I haven’t heard any plausible way to separate them

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     Matthew Garrett (mjg59@nondeterministic.computer)'s status on Sunday, 19-Apr-2026 11:47:04 JST Matthew Garrett

     in reply to

     • Glyph

     @glyph I think I've covered why the plagiarism bit feels less true to me for code than for other fields, and I don't think the error prone aspect of it matters for the cases I'm thinking of. The world burning and economic destruction and loss of human skills are certainly a consequence of how these things are currently deployed but it's not inherent (at least, not to anywhere near this scale), and having it be an immediate "no" rather than "Is there an ethical way to do this" feels rough

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:06:00 JST Charlie Stross

     in reply to

     @mjg59

     I'm a full-time professional novelist. Have been for 25 years. Before that I was a software dev. From the inside, the cognitive experiences of writing prose fiction and writing software *feel identical*. The creativity exists outside the words, and most of the phrases and grammar I use are unoriginal.

     Ball's back in your court.

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     Mike J👹🐀 🤘🏻 (mikej@mastodon.online)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:28:11 JST Mike J👹🐀 🤘🏻

     in reply to

     • Glyph
     • jwz

     @jwz @mjg59 @glyph I hang out with three guys who use AI.

     Guy 1 works at a rocket company and says he'd never use AI to design the part he works on, but uses it for little bits of code. Guy 2 works for a social media company and won't use AI for code, but uses it to write email reports to VPs. Guy 3 works at Microsoft and says AI is great as long as you don't use copilot.

     They all think AI is good at stuff they don't understand and sucks at things they do.

   • Embed this notice
     jwz (jwz@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:28:12 JST jwz

     in reply to

     • Glyph

     @mjg59 @glyph Anyway I've only been tangentially following this argument, but "code and prose are just different" has never held much water for me. They're not different and also you need both. Nor does the idea that LLMs are worse at one than the other, they're terrible at both.

     It strikes me as the same old fallacy: "The most enthusiastic bitcoin and blockchain proponents are the ones who understand neither databases nor economics."

     Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Garrett (mjg59@nondeterministic.computer)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:28:13 JST Matthew Garrett

     in reply to

     • Glyph
     • jwz

     @jwz @glyph Fair point, and also obviously commit messages play into this. If LLMs are tending to churn out people's comments I think my argument ends up massively weaker.

   • Embed this notice
     jwz (jwz@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:28:14 JST jwz

     in reply to

     • Glyph

     @mjg59 @glyph If half your code isn't prose -- which is to say comments -- then your code is, what's the word, bad.

   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Garrett (mjg59@nondeterministic.computer)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:28:15 JST Matthew Garrett

     in reply to

     • Glyph

     @glyph I understand your point and to me it does feel like there's a real difference that I'm not expressing terribly well. Words have a meaningful impact on how the story lands, and that just doesn't feel true for most code? In general I want code that clearly communicates the functional goal, not code that seeks to accentuate that through style.

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     Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 20-Apr-2026 05:28:16 JST Glyph

     in reply to

     @mjg59 but most of all you seem to be doing cartesian dualism here, where the “real” creativity is in the “system” not the “code”. but you can do that with prose, too? the sentences are mere words, nothing wrong with copying a word. no way to make someone weep with a punctuation mark, it’s the story where the creativity lies, not the words. and… sure? but there’s no transcendental essence outside of the mundane material components in either case