- cross-posted to:
- linux_gaming@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- linux_gaming@lemmy.world
A user asked on the official Lutris GitHub two weeks ago “is lutris slop now” and noted an increasing amount of “LLM generated commits”. To which the Lutris creator replied:
It’s only slop if you don’t know what you’re doing and/or are using low quality tools. But I have over 30 years of programming experience and use the best tool currently available. It was tremendously helpful in helping me catch up with everything I wasn’t able to do last year because of health issues / depression.
There are massive issues with AI tech, but those are caused by our current capitalist culture, not the tools themselves. In many ways, it couldn’t have been implemented in a worse way but it was AI that bought all the RAM, it was OpenAI. It was not AI that stole copyrighted content, it was Facebook. It wasn’t AI that laid off thousands of employees, it’s deluded executives who don’t understand that this tool is an augmentation, not a replacement for humans.
I’m not a big fan of having to pay a monthly sub to Anthropic, I don’t like depending on cloud services. But a few months ago (and I was pretty much at my lowest back then, barely able to do anything), I realized that this stuff was starting to do a competent job and was very valuable. And at least I’m not paying Google, Facebook, OpenAI or some company that cooperates with the US army.
Anyway, I was suspecting that this “issue” might come up so I’ve removed the Claude co-authorship from the commits a few days ago. So good luck figuring out what’s generated and what is not. Whether or not I use Claude is not going to change society, this requires changes at a deeper level, and we all know that nothing is going to improve with the current US administration.
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if you’re going to stoop so low as to use fucking AI have the decency to show it so people with actual standards know to avoid it. but to be fair, a cat n mouse game of whether it was used or not would make me avoid it anyway
They did but then people complained about them using AI
if you don’t want people to complain about you using AI, then don’t use AI. it’s easier than you think
This guy gets it.
Be open about it. Many people will not like it. Many people will not trust your product any longer. You need to be willing to let those people go with grace, or else you’re already taking on a project you can’t handle.
deleted by creator
I don’t support the use of AI tools in general, but i have a soft spot for long-term maintainers. These people generally don’t have enough support for this to be a full-time hobby, and when a project becomes popular the pressure is massive.
If the community wont step up to take the burden off the maintainer, but they still want active development, what can you do? As long as the program continues to be high quality, i cant complain about a free thing.
Tbh I agree, if the code is appropriate why care if it’s generated by an LLM
It’s all about curation and review. If they use AI to make the whole project, it’s going to be bloated slop. If they use it to write sections that they then review, edit, and validate; then it’s all good.
I’m fairly anti-AI for most current applications, but I’m not against purpose-built tools for improving workflow. I use some of Photoshop’s generative tools for editing parts of images I’m using for training material. Sometimes it does fine, sometimes I have to clean it up, and sometimes it’s so bad it’s not worth it. I’m being very selective, and if the details are wrong it’s no good. In the end, it’s still a photo I took, and it has some necessary touchups.
Yeah. Call me if he starts using AI artwork.
so you draw the line at stealing artists work, but not programmers work?
Lutris is GPL-licenced, so isn’t it the opposite of stealing?
LLMs have stolen works from more than just artists.
ALL of public repositories at a minimum have been used as training, regardless of licence. including licneses that require all dirivitive work be under the same license.
so there’s more than just lutris stollen.
So he’s a badass Robinhood pirate that steals code from corporations and gives it to the people?
The fuck you talking about.
Using a tool with billions of dollars behind it robinhood?
How is stealing open source prihcets code regardless of license stealing fr corporation’s?
- he’s not anthropic, and doesn’t have billions of dollars
- stealing from open source is not stealing, that’s the point of open source
- the argument above is that these models are allegedly trained “regardless of license” i.e. implying they are trained on non-oss code
No, the LLM was trained on other code (possibly including Lutris, but also probably like billions of lines from other things)
Tbh all programmers have been copy pasting from each other forever. The middle step of searching stack overflow or GitHub for the code you want is simply removed
Exactly. If someone has already come up with an optimal solution why the hell would I reimplement it. My real problems are not with LLMs themselves but rather the sourcing of the training data and the power usage. If I could use an “ethically sourced” llm locally I’d be mostly happy. Ultimately LLMs are also only good for code specifically. Architecture or things that require a lot of thought like data pipelines I’ve found AI to be pretty garbage at when experimenting
That’s not what an LLM is doing is it.
Being a developer, I don’t care if someone else uses my code. Code is like a brick. By itself it has little value, the real value lies on how it is used.
If I find an optimal way to do something, my only wish is to make it available to as much people as possible. For those who comes after.Sure, but that’s just your view.
And also not how LLMs work.
They gobble up everything and cause unreadable code. Not learning.
That’s not how LLMs work either.
An LLM had no knowledge, but has the statically probability of a token to follow another token, and given an overall context it create the statically most likely text.
To calculate such probability as accurently as possible you need as much examples as possible, to determine how often word A follow word B. Thus the immense datasets required.
Luckily for us programmers, computer programs are inherently statically similar, which makes LLMs quite good at it.
Now, the programs it create aren’t perfect, but it allows to write long, boring code fast, and even explain it if you require it to. This way I’ve learned a lot of new things that I wouldn’t have unless I had the time and energy to screw around with my programs (which I wished I had, but don’t), or looked around Open Source programs source code, which would take years to an average human.Now there is the problem of the ethic use of AI, which is a whole other aspect. I use only local models, which I run on my own hardware (usually using Ollama, but I’m looking into NPU enabled alternatives).
Elon, Jeff, and Mark thank you for your service
“If” doing all the lifting here.
If we ignore the mountain of evidence saying the opposite…
If a human is reviewing the code they submit and owning the changes I don’t care if they use an LLM or not. It’s when you just throw shit at the wall and hope it sticks that’s the problem.
I’m more concerned with the admitted OpenClaw usage. That’s a hydrogen bomb heading straight for a fireworks factory.
It’s the same for me.
I don’t care if somebody uses Claude or Copilot if they take ownership and responsibility over the code it generates. If they ask AI to add a feature and it creates code that doesn’t fit within the project guidelines, that’s fine as long as they actually clean it up.
I’m more concerned with the admitted OpenClaw usage. That’s a hydrogen bomb heading straight for a fireworks factory.
This is the problem I have with it too. Using something that vulnerable to prompt injection to not only write code but commit it as well shows a complete lack of care for bare minimum security practices.
Yikes. Hadn’t heard about the openclaw use. That stack scares the bejeezus out of me.
It’s still made by the slop machine, the same one that could only be created by stealing every human made artwork that’s ever been published. (And this is not “just one company”, every LLM has this issue.)
Not only that, the companies building massive datacenters are taking valuable resources from people just trying to live.
If the developer isn’t able to keep up, they should look for (co-)maintainers. Not turn to the greedy megacorps.
Just like how every other human artist learned how to draw by looking at examples their art teacher gave them, aka “stealing it” in your words.
LLMs are not sentient and they’re not learning.
If the developer isn’t able to keep up, they should look for (co-)maintainers.
Same energy as “Just go on Twitter and ask for free voice actors,” a la Vivziepop. People think this kind of shit is super easy, often out of either ignorance or privilege, but realistically, it’s nearly impossible to get people to dedicate that kind of effort to something that can never be more than a money/time sink.
I was under the impression that FOSS developers do it for the love of the game and not for monetary compensation. They’re literally putting the software out for free even though they don’t need to. They are going to be making this shit regardless.
That is what they are technically doing but they often don’t always consider the consequences and often react poorly when they realize that an Amazon (it whatever) comes along and contributes nothing and monetizes their work while dumping the support and maintenance on them.
That is the name of the game though if you use an MIT license.
My point was “Help me with my passion project for nothing” is a much harder sell. “Just find some help,” is advice along the lines of “Just get in a plane and fly it.”
At this point, teachers do it “for the love of the game”, but they still want to get paid more than minimum wage.
Hey, if your project is important enough you might get your own Jia Tan (:
Absolutely true, but there’s one clear and obvious way; drop support for the project yourself.
If a FOSS project is archived/unmaintained, for a large enough project, someone else will pick up where the original left off.
FOSS maintainers don’t owe anyone anything. What some developers do is amazing and I want them to keep developing and maintaining their projects, but I don’t fault them for quitting if they do.
If a FOSS project is archived/unmaintained, for a large enough project, someone else will pick up where the original left off.
No, they won’t. This line of thinking is how we got the above.
Their line of work is thankless, and nobody wants to do a fucking thankless job, especially when the last maintainer was given a bunch of shit for it.
Speaking only on the programming part of the slop machine, programmers typically copy code anyways. It’s not an ethical issue for a programmer using a tool that has been trained on other people’s “stolen” code.
rofl don’t quit your day job
A few years ago we were all arguing about how copyright is unfair to society and should be abolished.
Yeah people making that argument were dumb. Copyright needs to be fixed, not abolished.
Sure, but these same companies will drag you to court and rake you over the coals if you infringe on their copyrights.
More reason to destroy copyright.
Normal people can’t afford to fight the big companies who break theirs anyway. It’s only really a tool for big businesses to use against us.
Who is we? I wasn’t.
Because its used to benefit megacorps in practice. This situation is just more proof of that.
We weren’t all saying copyright altogether was unfair. In fact i think most of us have always said copyright law should exist, just that it shouldn’t be like ‘lifetime of the creator plus another 75 years after their death’. Copyright should be closer to how it was when the law was first started, which is something like 20 years.
(And personally imo there should also be some nuanced exceptions too.)
Copyright is what makes the GPL license enforceable.
Licenses only matter if you care about copyright. I’d much rather just appropriate whatever I want, whenever I want, for whatever I want. Copyright is capitalist nonsense and I just don’t respect notions of who “owns” what. You won’t need the GPL if you abolish the concept of intellectual property entirely.
It is offensive to me on a philosophical level to see that so many people feel that they should have control, in perpetuity, over who can see/read/experience/use something that they’ve put from their mind into the world. Doubly so when considering that their own knowledge and perspective is shaped by the works of those who came before. Software especially. It is sad that capitalism has so thoroughly warped the notion of what society should be that even self-proclaimed leftists can’t imagine a world where everything isn’t transactional in some way.
Precisely this, yes, well said. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, one way or another.
The GPL license only exists because copyright fucked over the public contract that it promised to society: Copyrights are temporary and will be given back to public domain. Instead, shitheads like Mark Twain and Disney extended copyright to practically forever.
I don’t understand your position here. If we went back to a more reasonable 7 or 14 year copyright term, how would that obviate the need for a license like the GPL, which permits instant use of code provided you share-alike? Those shorter copyright lengths would be pretty reasonable for books or movies, but would still suck for tech.
We would be faaaaaar less hostile towards copyrights if we had a regular source of RECENT public domain coming out every year.
I’m not saying that it would make GPL or OSS licenses useless. I’m just saying that the motivation and need for those licenses are because we don’t live in a society where freely available media and data are much more commonplace.
I want to one day make a game and there is no way I’m not prototyping it with llm code, though I would want to get things finalized by a real coder if I ever got the game finished but I’ve never made real progress on learning code even in school
Personally, I have never seen LLM generated code that works without needing to be edited, but I imagine for routine blocks of code and very common things it probably does fine. I dont see why a programmer needs to rewrite the same code blocks over and over again for different projects when an LLM can do that part leaving more time for the programmer to write the more specialized parts. The programmer will still have to edit and verify the generated code, but programming is more mechanical than something like art.
However, for more specialized code, I would be concerned. It would likely not function at all without editing, and if it did function it probably wouldn’t be optimized or secure. However, this programmer claims to have 30 years of experience, and if thats the case then he likely knows this and probably edits the LLM output code himself.
As I have said before, Generative AI is a tool, like PhotoShop. I dont see why people should reject a tool if it can make their job easier. It won’t be able to completely replace people effectively. Businesses will try, but quality will drop off because its not being used by people that understand what the end result needs to be, and businesses will inevitably lose money.
However, for more specialized code, I would be concerned. It would likely not function at all without editing, and if it did function it probably wouldn’t be optimized or secure.
That’s not completely true. Claude and some of the Chinese coding models have gotten a lot better at creating a good first pass.
That’s also why I like tests. Just force the model to prove that it works.
Oh, you built the thing and think it’s finished? Prove it. Go run it. Did it work? No? Then go fix the bugs. Does it compile now? Cool, run the unit test platform. Got more bugs? Fix them. Now, go write more unit tests to match the bugs you found. You keep running into the same coding issue? Go write some rules for me that tell yourself not to do that shit.
I mean, I’ve been doing this programming shit for many decades, and even I’ve been caught by my overconfidence of trying to write some big project and thinking it’s just going to work the first time. No reason to think even a high-powered Claude thinking model is going to magically just write the whole thing bug-free.
- Ethical issue: products of the mind are what makes us humans. If we delegate art, intellectual works, creative labour, what’s left of us?
- Socio-economic issue: if we lose labour to AI, surely the value produced automatically will be redistributed to the ones who need it most? (Yeah we know the answer to this one)
- Cultural issue: AIs are appropriating intellectual works and virtually transferring their usufruct to bloody billionaires
Hiding it won’t make the code any better genius.
If you can’t tell then it means it’s good enough
More likely if we can’t tell then it was always shit. AI can’t write good code for anything non-trivial.
Fuck nuance, AI bad, herp derp!
you can criticise them but ultimately they are a unpaid developer making their work freely available to the benefit of us all. at least don’t harass the developer.
I agree with you with the current state of things in the world is hard to keep up and easy to complain. I’d say instead of asking the guy to not use AI ask him what he needs for help. He’s clearly stating that he’s in burnout.
I don’t have the time or skills to help so I wouldn’t go complaining.They want to put clanker code that they freely admit they don’t validate into a product that goes on the computers of people who’s experience with Linux is “I heard it’s faster for games”
It’s irresponsible to hide it from review. It doesn’t matter if AI tools got better, AI tools still aren’t perfect and so you still have to do the legwork. Or at least let your community.
Also, you should let your community make ethics decisions about whether to support you.
Overall it was a rash reaction to being pressured rudely in a GitHub thread; but you know AI is a contentious topic and you went in anyway. It’s weak AF to then have a tantrum and spit in the community’s face about it.
Nothing is being hidden from review. The code is open source. They removed the specific attribution that indicates which parts of the code were created using Claude. That changes absolutely nothing about the ability to review the code, because a code review should not distinguish between human written code and machine written code; all of it should be checked thoroughly. In fact, I would argue that specifically designating code as machine written is detrimental to code review, because there will be a subconscious bias among many reviewers to only focus on reviewing the machine code.
In fact, I would argue that specifically designating code as machine written is detrimental to code review, because there will be a subconscious bias among many reviewers to only focus on reviewing the machine code.
Oh, it’s more than subconscious, as you can see in this thread.
Lutris developer makes a perfectly sane and nuianced response to a reactionary “is lutris slop now” comment, and gets shit on for it, because everybody has to fight in black and white terms. There are no grey opinions, only battle lines to be drawn to these people.
What? Are you all going to shit on your lord and savior Linus himself for also saying he uses LLMs? Oh, what, you didn’t know?!?
The response is only nuanced until the “good luck” sentence. If he swallowed that it would be an almost perfect response. But that sentence is a quite big “fuck you”.
It’s not as much of a “fuck you” as much as “I’m tired of this same fucking response, when all I’m trying to do is get some work done, which I do for fucking free, by the way”.
A little personal flourish doesn’t invalidate the rest IMO. Humans get aggravated and humans are aggravating.
Yes, and I didn’t say that. I even argued in favor of his response thoughout this whole post (getting a shit ton of downvotes all along). But I think that doesn’t invalidate my point either: without this one sentence, his whole chain of arguments would have been pretty good and reasonable. It was just unnecessary to then add this snarky remark. It’s understandable if he’s pissed, but just because you are pissed when you say something doesn’t make what you said a clever move.
They are on liberapay if you want to support the project btw. Combined with Patreon, they sit at less than 700$ a week. That’s like half a dev before tax
?
Yes, that’s Liberapay. You may have noticed that I mentioned Patreon.
You might as well donate to Anthropic.
You make a fair point, but I feel like the trolling reaction they gave was asking for more backlash. Not responding was probably the best move.
Trolling? They gave a pretty good answer explaining their reasoning.
I’ve removed the Claude co-authorship from the commits a few days ago. So good luck figuring out what’s generated and what is not.
Seems pretty obvious to me that they knew this wouldn’t go over well. It was inflammatory by design.
Yeah ok. True. I think the rest of the post has much more weight, though. But yeah, he should have swallowed that last sentence.
It’s typical of dev burnout, though. Communication starts becoming more impulsive and less constructive, especially in the face of conflicts of opinions.
I’ve seen it play a few times already. A toxic community will take a dev who’s already struggling, troll them, screenshot their problematic responses, and use that in a campaign across relevant places such as github, reddit, lemmy… Maybe add a little light harassment on the side, as a treat. It’s a fun activity ! The dev spirals, posts increasingly unhinged responses and often quits as a result.
The fact that the thread is titled “is lutris slop now” is a clear indication that the intention of the poster wasn’t to contribute anything constructive but to attack the dev and put them on their back foot.
… You’re right. I definitely wouldn’t be above such a response.
The problem is, a lot of people here - myself included - were/are also being impulsive about their responses to this issue, at least partially due to all the shitty stuff caused by GenAI.
There might be some toxic people too, I wouldn’t be surprised - but this can happen without them, too.
The thing is, toxic people thrive in mob situations and are often found leading or even manufacturing them. I tend to be wary around this kind of setups as they are easy to get caught up in and hard to get out of.
The fact that the thread is titled “is lutris slop now” is a clear indication that the intention of the poster wasn’t to contribute anything constructive but to attack the dev and put them on their back foot.
No, it was literally an important question to have answered. And booooy did the dev answer.
Is it appropriate to ask a stranger a question by first calling their work “slop” ? Is that how you communicate with people ? How is that working out irl ?
Y’all are so immersed in bully culture that this seems normal to you smh
Wow, calling asking to identify if something is a thing by the name of the thing that it’s being asked about is “bully culture” now? This is a whole new low level of argument in the pro-AI take.
So yes, you think this is normal human behaviour. Good luck with that shit, i hope the world treats you with the same energy.
I see your point. I might also have responded poorly to that, on some level at least.
Yeah same. I’d like to think i’d answer “I’ll use AI, if you don’t like it you can fork the project and i wish you good luck. Go share your opinion on AI in an appropriate place.”. But realistically there’s a high chance it catches me on a bad day and i get stupid.
I understand the hatred towards AI, but people gotta understand that there’s a difference between coding with AI and Vibecoding. They are DIFFERENT THINGS! AI is userful, what is not are both vibecoding and shaming a developer with 30 years of real world experience with no AI support for using it for once. Using AI is ok if you do that critically and with common sense
You are correct but people in general are pretty bad at subtly and grey area. Just look at the current state of political discourse in the US. Probably half the people that support the likes of Trump do so because they like black/white binary choice and can’t handle shades of grey in their life emotionally.
100% american public debate lol
Pass
Please, go ahead and remove everything “AI” in your life. No social media. No GPS. No assist when driving or being driven. No streaming of any kind. No meteo apps. Ask your boss to remove everything related to prevision in his company. Ask your doctor to not use any tool to help his diagnosis if you have a scanner for cancer.
Let’s see how many of those you can “pass”. Or let’s see if it helps you develop a critical mind about to use which tool for which job and how to use it.
I’m already full Linux at work. Location on my mobile is always OFF unless I need it on rare occasions. I don’t stream. I self host.
Say your last sentence into a mirror today.
Bro, you are on fucking Lemmy. We are all like you. You are not special. You never ever use GPS to locate yourself, right? You never go from a to b. You never go in a shop to buy food. You never go to the doctor. You never buy anything online. You never watch YouTube. Sure.
Who hurt you
Ho, so that’s your argument? What a fucking kid. It’s easy to have an opinion. It’s harder to know why and not being a fucking parrot because you’re so edgy.
I for news for you its the same thing. There is no difference besides maybe the prompt same AI is writing the code. And I do bit believe a coder is going over every single line of code.
I totally agree. I’m not an AI hype man. I want to scream whenever I see a PR littered with emojis, bullet lists, and way too much text for a simple change. I hate the discussions about the transformative power of AI, the 10x production gains, all the million tools, agents, skills, plugins, methods I should be using but I am already behind and old and probably unemployed next week, right? Still, AI use is not inherently bad. It gets me unstuck. It finds subtle errors I wasn’t noticing, it writes documentation faster and better than I can. I hate the companies who are pushing it, the methods of it’s training, but the tool itself is just a tool and sometimes a very useful one. IMHO we shouldn’t shame every open source developer just for using it. As long as they are responsible with it, I’m fine with some AI code in my software.
If it’s making commits for you you’re vibe coding.
I use it at work, I use it for troubleshooting and if I get it to generate anything for me, I stage them and review them before committing myself
Jokes on you, I’ve used it to untangle messy git problems (with a backup of course).
You can do that with 99.9% less damage to the environment and the working class with
git -f rebase, or even the old tried and true method ofrm -rf && git pull ....Not in my case I’m afraid.
Oh you have to deal with the actually gnarly parts of git… sending my condolences.
It’s OK, I did it to myself. Claude fixed it though. :) I think it’d still be broken otherwise lmao
No, vibe coding explicitly requires NEVER looking at the actual code. I can give claude a ticket, it creates a plan. I review that plan, maybe change some things. Then claude does the thing. I review the code, then tell claude to fix X. Then I test, then I tell claude to create a commit.
There we have claude creating a commit without any of it being vibe coded
Are you asking people to be rational? What kind of monster are you
It is more nuance than rationality.
There are plenty of reasons to hate on AI. But in the end they are just tools to automate things. It depends entirely on how it is being used. With enough effort and most importantly checking the output, you can create things faster while still keeping the same quality as before.
Calling anything that even slightly touched an LLM “slop” and crawling in a fetus position while crying is a lot less rational. These people have no idea about the real world.
I don’t know what Lutris is so I guess I’ll continue to not use it.
It’s an automated tool for pulling the latest fixes to get a game running as well as it possibly can with as little fuss as possible. Basically a bunch of scripts to automatically pull mods and configuration options and such, especially for Linux compatibility.
I wonder if they’ll be able to use this ai to finally generate ssl keys for the Debian repo…
Won’t repeat what I wrote just hours ago in https://lemmy.world/post/44130119/22616090 but just the ending :
"I would personally consider instead Bottles, GOG (have different problems), Steam (obviously not open source and basically monopolistic position), etc.
Overall I think preventing discussion is healthy (even though sadly sometimes needed, here I lack context, maybe the issue poster did this numerous time on other platforms, title definitely was provocative) but removing provenance is NEVER a good choice. They want to use Claude on their repo? Absolutely fine (even though not to me) but hiding it makes it instantly untrustworthy to me. In fact I even argued in the past that even though I personally do not use GenAI/LLMs (for coding or otherwise) except for testing it should always be disclosed precisely so that others can make THEIR choice in consequence, including using or contributing, cf https://fabien.benetou.fr/Analysis/AgainstPoorArtificialIntelligencePractices"
Overall I think preventing discussion is healthy
Did you mean unhealthy?
I’m just gonna stop you right there.
🥗
I don’t understand what you meant here. OP did mean to write “unhealthy”.
The joke is that stopping discussion is healthy (which was obviously wrong). So I said I was stopping you–and thus the discussion–and then showed it was healthy with a salad.
Damned, edited, thanks! (shows the benefit of discussing ;)
Oops. Guess I’m uninstalling Lutris.
Personally, I have blocked Claude on GitHub, which helpfully puts a huge banner on any project it has infected.
Then unless I have absolutely no choice but using it, I get rid of it.
Every extra person using all these AI tools is only adding to the issue.
No, literally the opposite. They are going to do this until it is not financially viable. The more frugal and conscientious people are with their AI, the longer it is financially viable. If you want to pop the bubble, go set up a bot to hammer their free systems with bogus prompts. Run up their bills until they can’t afford to be speculative any more.
My electric bill is already 2x+ that of the neighboring city due to data centers having an understanding with the for profit electric company that serves us. No thank you.
Run up their bills until they can’t afford to be speculative any more.
Sadly I don’t think you’ve met venture capitalists… they will use your usage as a KPI for success. They have a runway longer than you can imagine, check the history of Amazon or Uber. They can be unprofitable for years, heck longer than a decade, and they are fine with it because they are claiming (and sadly sometimes right) to be cornering a trillion dollar market.
Amazon is the exception, not the rule. Check the history of the dotcom bubble, including amazon. Uber is no longer allowed to lose money like it once was. That’s why they’ve switched from cheap rides and good pay, to algorithmic pricing and shit pay.
I’m not saying it’s a good strategy, just that since SoftBank it’s basically core to the VC default playbook.
I believe it’s been tweaked, thanks to Musk, Enron and banks to subsidies transitioning to too big to fail.
So, it might not work, ever, but I still think if you look at the large VC rounds, that’s what they are funding, to be so big nobody can reach you at any cost.
Yeah, this is actually one of the good things a technology like this can do.
He’s dead right, in terms of slop, if it’s someone with training and experience using a tool, it doesn’t matter if that tool is vim or claude. It ain’t slop if it’s built right.
slop is slop.
microslop
slopware
slopity slop slop.
And talking in absolutes without looking for nuance is not mature nor does it use any form of critical thinking.
I’m sorry. you’re absolutely right. I shouldn’t have said that.
Lmao I see what you did there
It is awesome that you left the previous comment in place. Mad props!
It ain’t slop if it’s built right.
Yeah but the problem is, is it? They absolutely insist that we use AI at work, which is not only insane concept in and of itself, but the problem is that if I have to nanny it to make sure it doesn’t make a mistake then how is it a useful product?
He says it helps him get work done he wouldn’t otherwise do, but how’s that possible? how is it possible that he is giving every line of code the same scrutiny he would if he wrote it himself, if he himself admits that he would never have got around to writing that code had the AI not done it? The math ain’t matching on this one.
You do have to consider that this is an opensource developer creating something free in his free time. The app is also not life or death. Meaning, his quality standards are UNDERSTANDABLY not as high as if he was working for money on a banks money system.
In the end, all of the complainers are welcome to do the work themselves. That way, he won’t have to use AI at all.
the problem is that if I have to nanny it to make sure it doesn’t make a mistake then how is it a useful product?
When was the last time you coded something perfectly? “If I have to nanny you to make sure you don’t make a mistake, then how are you a useful employee?” See how that doesn’t make sense. There’s a reason why good development shops live on the backs of their code reviews and review practices.
The math ain’t matching on this one.
The math is just fine. Code reviews, even audit-level thorough ones, cost far less time than doing the actual coding.
There’s also something to be said about the value in being able to tell an LLM to go chew on some code and tests for 10 minutes while I go make a sandwich. I get to make my sandwich, and come back, and there’s code there. I still have to review it, point out some mistakes, and then go back and refill my drink.
And there’s so much you can customize with personal rules. Don’t like its coding style? Write Markdown rules that reflect your own style. Have issues with it tripping over certain bugs? Write rules or memories that remind it to be more aware of those bugs. Are you explaining a complex workflow to it over and over again? Explain it once, and tell it to write the rules file for you.
All of that saves more and more time. The more rules you have for a specific project, the more knowledge it retains on how code for that project, and the more experience you gain in how to communicate to an entity that can understand your ideas. You wouldn’t believe how many people can’t rubberduck and explain proper concepts to people, much less LLMs.
LLMs are patient. They don’t give a shit if you keep demanding more and more tweaks and fixes, or if you have to spend a bit of time trying to explain a concept. Human developers would get tired of your demands after a while, and tell you to fuck off.
The math is just fine. Code reviews, even audit-level thorough ones, cost far less time than doing the actual coding.
But the problem never was typing in the actual code. The majority of coding is understanding the problem you’re trying to solve and figuring out a good solution. If you let the AI do the thinking for you, then you’re building AI slop. You can’t review your way out of it because a proper review still requires that level of understanding the problem. If you just let the AI do the typing for you, there’s very little to be gained there as the time spent typing is negligible.
AI may be good at building simple, boilerplate-level code. But that’s what we have junior developers for. Junior developers we need because they grow into medior and senior developers.
This really depends on the project. For example, if you’re creating a CRUD web app for managing some kind of data, the main tough decisions involve system and data architecture. After that, most other work is straight forward menial work. It doesn’t take a genius to validate a gajillion text fields for a specific min and max length, map them to the correct field in the API, validate on the server again, and write them to the correct database field.
I agree that AI might screw companies over in the long run, when there’s no more juniors that can become seniors. That doesn’t apply to this case at all.
If you let the AI do the thinking for you, then you’re building AI slop.
No, for major projects, you start out with a plan. I may spend upwards of 2-3 hours just drafting a plan with the LLM, figuring out options, asking questions when it’s an area I don’t have top-familiarity with, crafting what the modules are going to look like. It’s not slop when you’re planning out what to do and what your end result is supposed to be.
People who talk this way have zero experience with actually using LLMs, especially coding models.
Oh so I didn’t vibe code a go program that I have no understanding of the language cause I knew what I wanted the program to do in the end. Got you I am now a go developer. I didn’t just ask the ai to do something I new which library I wanted it to use and new what I wanted it to interface with and new exactly what I wanted it to do.
Well, I’m not a code monkey, between dyslexia and an aging brain. But if it’s anything like the tiny bit of coding I used to be able to do (back in the days of basic and pascal), you don’t really have to pore over every single line. Only time that’s needed is when something is broken. Otherwise, you’re scanning to keep oversight, which is no different than reviewing a human’s code that you didn’t write.
Look at it like this; we automated assembly of machines a long time ago. It had flaws early on that required intense supervision. The only difference here on a practical level is about how the damn things learned in the first place. Automating code generation is way more similar to that than llms that generate text or images that aren’t logical by nature.
If the code used to train the models was good, what it outputs will be no worse in scale than some high school kid in an ap class stepping into their first serious challenges. It will need review, but if the output is going to be open source to begin with, it’ll get that review even if the project maintainers slip up.
And being real, lutris has been very smooth across the board while using the generated code so far. So if he gets lazy, it could go downhill; but that could happen if he gets lazy with his own code.
Another concept that I am more familiar with, that does relate. Writing fiction can take months. Editing fiction usually takes days, and you can still miss stuff (my first book has typos and errors to this day because of the aforementioned dyslexia and me not having a copy editor).
My first project back in the eighties in basic took me three days to crank out during the summer program I was in. The professor running the program took an hour to scan and correct that code.
Maybe I’m too far behind the various languages, but I really can’t see it being a massively harder proposition to scan and edit the output of an llm.
You’re going to screech at this guy contributing his time and code, who in all likelihood will pump out more features. Absurd. Prejudice and fear has blinded a significant portion of the foss community
In this particular case, I think the use of AI is tolerable. But as someone who uses Lutris sometimes, I do have concerns about whether or not this will cause issues with running games through it. How do we know if the AI generated code is going to make Lutris slow or possibly cause games to not work properly that otherwise would have worked perfectly fine?
Whenever I’ve tried running games in both Wine by itself and Lutris, I have noticed that they do often run noticeably slower in Lutris. And I also don’t have the best PC to begin with, so this is a big concern of mine.
