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I notice a couple of things in the pro-AI [1] posts: All start writing in a lengthy style like Steve Yegge in his peak. All are written by ex-programmers who ar

I notice a couple of things in the pro-AI [1] posts: All start writing in a lengthy style like Steve Yegge in his peak. All are written by ex-programmers who are on the management/founder side now. All of them cite programmer friends who claim that AI is useful. It is very strange that no real open source project uses "AI" in any way. Perhaps these friends work on closed source and say what their manager wants them to say? Or they no longer care? Or they work in "AI" companies? [1] He does mention return on investment doubts and waste of energy, but claims that the agent nonsense works (without public evidence).

bwfan123 1y ago
There is a large number of wannabe hands-on coders who have moved on to become management - and they all either have coder-envy or coder-hatred. To them, gen-ai is a savior - Earlier, they felt out of the game - now, they feel like they can compete. Earlier they were wannabe coders. Now they are legit. But, this will last only until they accept a chunk of code put out by co-pilot and then spend the next 2 days wrangling with it. At that point, it dawns on them what these tools can actually do.
- lezojeda 1y ago
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orangecat 1y ago
I'm a programmer, not a manager. I don't have a blog. AI is useful. It is very strange that no real open source project uses "AI" in any way. How do you know? Given the strong opposition that lots of people have I wouldn't expect its use to be actively publicized. But yes, I would expect that plenty of open source contributors are at the very least using Cursor-style tab completion or having AIs generate boilerplate code. Perhaps these friends work on closed source and say what their manager wants them to say? "Everyone who disagrees with me is paid to lie" is a really tiresome refrain.
rjsw 1y ago
At least in my main open source project, use of AI is prohibited due to potentially tainting the codebase with stuff derived from other GPL projects.
zurfer 1y ago
Using AI in real projects is not super simple but if you lean into it, it can accelerate things. Anecdotally check this out https://github.com/antiwork/gumroad/graphs/contributors https://github.com/antiwork/gumroad/graphs/contributors Devin is an AI agent
cesarb 1y ago
> It is very strange that no real open source project uses "AI" in any way. Using genAI is particularly hard on open source projects due to worries about licensing: if your project is under license X, you don't want to risk including any code with a license incompatible with X, or even under a license compatible with X but without the correct attribution. It's still not settled whether genAI can really "launder" the license of the code in its training set, or whether legal theories like "subconscious copying" would apply. In the later case, using genAI could be very risky.
senko 1y ago
What’s “real open source” to you? I have a niche project useful to a small audience (grocery prices crawler for Croatian stores), 70ish stars, 10 or so forks, a few contributors, AGPL licensed. I used AI a lot (vibe coding for spikes and throwaway tools, AI-assisted coding for prod code, chatgpt sessions to optimize db schema and queries, etc). I’d say some 80% or more of the code was written by Claude and reviewed by me. It has not only sped up the development, but as a side project, I would never even have finished it (deployed to prod with enough features to be useful) without AI. Now you can say that doesn’t count because it’s a side project, or because I’m bullish on AI (I am, without jumping on the hype train), or because it’s too small, or because I haven’t blogged about it, or because anecdotes are not data, and I will readily admit I’m not a true Scotsman.

bwfan123 1y ago

There is a large number of wannabe hands-on coders who have moved on to become management - and they all either have coder-envy or coder-hatred. To them, gen-ai is a savior - Earlier, they felt out of the game - now, they feel like they can compete. Earlier they were wannabe coders. Now they are legit. But, this will last only until they accept a chunk of code put out by co-pilot and then spend the next 2 days wrangling with it. At that point, it dawns on them what these tools can actually do.

lezojeda 1y ago
[dead]

orangecat 1y ago

I'm a programmer, not a manager. I don't have a blog. AI is useful. It is very strange that no real open source project uses "AI" in any way. How do you know? Given the strong opposition that lots of people have I wouldn't expect its use to be actively publicized. But yes, I would expect that plenty of open source contributors are at the very least using Cursor-style tab completion or having AIs generate boilerplate code. Perhaps these friends work on closed source and say what their manager wants them to say? "Everyone who disagrees with me is paid to lie" is a really tiresome refrain.

rjsw 1y ago

At least in my main open source project, use of AI is prohibited due to potentially tainting the codebase with stuff derived from other GPL projects.

zurfer 1y ago

Using AI in real projects is not super simple but if you lean into it, it can accelerate things. Anecdotally check this out https://github.com/antiwork/gumroad/graphs/contributors https://github.com/antiwork/gumroad/graphs/contributors Devin is an AI agent

cesarb 1y ago

> It is very strange that no real open source project uses "AI" in any way. Using genAI is particularly hard on open source projects due to worries about licensing: if your project is under license X, you don't want to risk including any code with a license incompatible with X, or even under a license compatible with X but without the correct attribution. It's still not settled whether genAI can really "launder" the license of the code in its training set, or whether legal theories like "subconscious copying" would apply. In the later case, using genAI could be very risky.

senko 1y ago

What’s “real open source” to you? I have a niche project useful to a small audience (grocery prices crawler for Croatian stores), 70ish stars, 10 or so forks, a few contributors, AGPL licensed. I used AI a lot (vibe coding for spikes and throwaway tools, AI-assisted coding for prod code, chatgpt sessions to optimize db schema and queries, etc). I’d say some 80% or more of the code was written by Claude and reviewed by me. It has not only sped up the development, but as a side project, I would never even have finished it (deployed to prod with enough features to be useful) without AI. Now you can say that doesn’t count because it’s a side project, or because I’m bullish on AI (I am, without jumping on the hype train), or because it’s too small, or because I haven’t blogged about it, or because anecdotes are not data, and I will readily admit I’m not a true Scotsman.