alt Hacker NewsI've got to be honest: my complete skepticism that the maker movement is somehow past tense makes it extremely difficult for me to take this tenuous comparison to LLM coding particularly seriously.
The author talks about lowered barriers to prototyping as though they represent a failure state; that's absurd, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether most people have membership-based maker spaces nearby.
Meanwhile, we're in a golden era of tool access. It's now possible for people to buy affordable CNCs, laser cutters and UV printers. I have a freaking pick and place in my home.
Also, you can have custom PCBs shipped to you in a week for about $10.
Having LLMs available at the same time as all of these tools are rapidly evolving means that anyone with an idea can prototype just about anything. In my worldview, anyone not excited about this either has no original ideas or a cynical agenda.
I'd say more but I have to get back to work on my maker projects.
Replies
> It's now possible for people to buy affordable CNCs, laser cutters and UV printers.
Do a lot of people do it? Maybe the answer is a tentative yes, given news like the recent case about guns and 3D printing.
I disagree with your framing cynicism as an "agenda". For the record, I agree that the maker movement hasn't actually ended, and most of your points are correct; however, the idea of LLMs teaching Electronics worries me about as much as people using LLMs to learn Chemistry.
A little while ago I had to dissuade someone from learning Chemistry via an LLM, because the advice that they had been given by the LLM would have very literally either blown up the glassware, throwing molten chemicals all over their clothing, or killed them when they tried to taste whatever they were trying to synthesize. There was no consideration of safety protocol, PPE, proper glassware, or correctly dealing with chemical reactions, and nary a mention of a fucking fume hood. NileRed and a few other chemistry youtubers have utterly woeful approaches to laboratory safety (NileRed specifically I have a chip on my shoulder about — I've seen him practice bad lab work on a number of occasions and violate many of the common safety practices from e.g. Vogel's), but even then they do still take precautions! Let it not be forgotten that safety practices are born through bloodshed. Now we have a whole new wave of people who are excited to learn, and that's great, but one stray hallucination will kill them. I'm sure that the LLM will be more than happy to write an "Oh I'm sorry, it's my bad that I forgot to tell you to double glove when handling organic mercury!" but by then it is too late.
The idea of someone learning, say, House DIY from an LLM and then sawing through the joists or rewiring their electronics is utterly terrifying to me, quite frankly. Likewise, the idea of someone following an LLM's instructions and then blowing themselves up in a shower of capacitors or chemical glassware is also utterly terrifying to me.
Yes, you could do all these things before. But at least the most commonly available learning materials to you were trustworthy and written by experts!
I'm in the same camp.
I don't love that my career seems to be evaporating and perhaps no one will have a use for me soon, but, LLMs have made making even easier and more fun than ever. My sense of what I can take on has been amplified so much, it feels like a super power. Reverse engineering things used to be intimidating to take on, but now it feels like a couple afternoons of exploring with Claude. Understanding the scope of ideas is way more accessible, and often more constrained than it used to be.
I learn so much more than I used to, I get more done than I used to. I love it.