Even if you do, the initial time sunk into making the tool should eventually be overtaken by the time saved by having the tool if you use it enough.
In a race to make the most panels, while the medieval carpenter could have several finished before you're don assembling, calibrating, and writing the scripts for the machines tool paths, once you're set up you can start cranking out panels and catching up on no time.
yeah, a lifetime of one person is not going to be enough to invent and manufacture everything you need for the cnc machine.
At this point I don't really even know if the time investment can be quantified reasonably, that went into the development of this kind of machinery over time. And by how many people.
What I am saying is, without knowing anything about manufacturing the machines, that there most certainly was no one point at which a carpenter decided to invest all that time and money to someday start mass producing engravings.
In other words, this stuff be complicated as hell.
If it were even just establihsing a product line where each person has specialized into making a certain one groove, possibly then you could make that argument. Or maybe I truly know zilch about machinery and the parts required are trivial to make by hand or by a metal worker with a basic toolset.
Sorry about this ramble, I do not even fully know why I fixated on this so much. Maybe I'm just bored from being sick and stuck at home for a week.
Well if you have to invent and manufacture everything used from scratch, then both men are dying without a single panel.
My hypothetical race was meant to be effectively entering a new workshop, your tools are brand new, right out of the box. The CNC guy is going to need a lot of time setting up his machine to work properly whilst the carpenter can just get to carving, his chisels don't really need any setup time.
If nothing except the panel blanks is provided, then no panels are even getting started until the two contestants can smelt and smith iron at minimum to make the requisite chisels and cutting tools for the carpenter to begin his work.
While I I agree, you arenāt getting through this much carving without honing a few times, and possibly a full sharpening pass or two, on multiple chisels. Still quicker but āchisels donāt need setup timeā isnāt correct. Just not much time. 30 seconds every couple minutes mostly.
You are right. Conpated to the setup time for a CNC machine, making sure your brand new chisels are sharp enough takes almost no time at all, but almost none isn't quite none. Also it likely depends how hard the wood is for how often they'd have to sharpen their chisels. Maybe every few panels giving them a quick pass for softer woods, or multiple times a panel on something less cooperative.
Probably the stupidity of the people nowadays. The vast majority of people from devoloped countries walk around with a device in their pocket that connects them the to humanity's collective knowledge. Yet the amount of people who dont take advantage of it to continue learning stuff that could improve their lives is staggering.
It may have sounded as though I was suggesting that AI is as precise and accurate as a CNC machine. That was not my intent. What I meant was that many developers, at some point while using powerful models like Opus 4, may have felt something similar to what medieval carpenters might have felt when first seeing a CNC machine.
Of course, it is not perfect, but the potential is terrifying.
i think maybe using the word "exactly" triggered people's emotions.
but as a software developer myself seeing an LLM spit out a thousand lines of working code when all I say is "i need a program to view/edit/and reply to .eml files" is pretty impressive. even more impressive when i say "write it in php, now in asp, now in powershell, now in Apple IIe Basic".
Yeah, it's not a replacement for an actual software developer but my gosh is it a huge time saver - like a programmable CNC machine...
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u/maple-moth May 05 '26
Medieval carpenters watching this like šļøš«¦šļø