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They genuinely believe their use of chatbots is equivalent to multiple years of production experience in a language. They want to erase that distinction (“democ

They genuinely believe their use of chatbots is equivalent to multiple years of production experience in a language. They want to erase that distinction (“democratize”) so they can have the same privileges and status without the work. Otherwise, what’s the harm in saying AI guides you to the solution if you can attest to it being a good solution?

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
I guess it's just different kinds of people. I have used Copilot to generate code I barely understand (stuff for a microcontroller project, nothing important) but I wouldn't in a thousand years say I wrote it. I broadly understand how it works, and like, if someone wanted to see it, I'd show them. But like... how can you take pride in something you didn't make?
- mattgreenrocks 1y ago
  Not making the thing is a point in favor of LLMs for some of these people I suspect. So the pride in work thing is just not high on the list of incentives. I don’t get it at all. Feels like modernity is often times just inventing pale shadows of things with more addictive hooks to induce needlessly dependent behavior.
  - KritVutGu 1y ago
    > the pride in work thing is just not high on the list of incentives Thanks for putting it so well. That is what hurts. A lot. Taking pride out of work, especially creative work, makes the world a worse place; it makes life less worth living. > inventing pale shadows of things Yes.
blurbleblurble 1y ago
That's just not true. I have 20 years of dev experience and also am using these tools. I won't commit slop. I'm open to being transparent about my usage of AI but tbh right now there's so much bias and vitriol coming from people afraid of these new tools that in the haze of their fear I don't trust people will actually take the time to neutrally determine whether or not the code is actually slop. I've had manually written, well thought through, well conceived, rough around the edges code get called "AI slop" by a colleague (who I very much respect and have a good relationship with) who admittedly hadn't had a chance to thoroughly understand the code yet. If I just vibe-coded something and haven't looked at the code myself, that seems like a necessary thing to disclose. But beyond that, if the code is well understood and solid, I feel that I'd be clouding the conversation by unnecessarily bringing the tools I used into it. If I understand the code and feel confident in it, whether I used AI or not seems irrelevant and distracting. This policy is just shoving the real problem under the rug. Generative AI is going to require us to come up with better curation/filtering/selection tooling, in general. This heuristic of "whether or not someone self-disclosed using LLMs" just doesn't seem very useful in the long run. Maybe it's a piece of the puzzle but I'm pretty sure there are more useful ways to sift through PRs than that. Line count differences, for example. Whether it was a person with an LLM or a 10x coder without one, a PR that adds 15000 lines is just not likely to be it.
- eschaton 1y ago
  You should not just be open to being transparent, you need to understand that there will be times you will be required to be transparent about the tools you’ve used and the ultimate origin of your contributions, and that trying to evade or even push back against it is a huge red flag that you cannot be trusted to abide by your commitments. If you’re unwilling to stop using slop tools, then you don’t get to contribute to some projects, and you need to be accept that.
  - blurbleblurble 1y ago
    Your blanket determination that the tools themselves are slop generators is an attitude I'm definitely not interested in engaging with in collaboration.
    - eschaton 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - blurbleblurble 1y ago
        I'd way sooner quit my job / not contribute than deal with someone who projects on me the way you have in this conversation.
        eschaton 1y ago
        Enjoy being found out for fraudulently passing off work you didn’t do as your own then.
        blurbleblurble 1y ago
        Ironically as a practice I'm actually quite transparent about how I use LLMs and believe that destigmatising open conversation about use of these tools is actually really important, just not that it's a useful heuristic for whether or not some code is slop.
throwawaybob420 1y ago
Democratize X via boiling our oceans!!
- blurbleblurble 1y ago
  https://youtu.be/klW65MWJ1PY?t=3234 https://youtu.be/klW65MWJ1PY?t=3234 https://youtu.be/klW65MWJ1PY?t=1320 https://youtu.be/klW65MWJ1PY?t=1320 X sucks and should not be allowed to proceed with what they're doing in Memphis. Nor should Meta be allowed to proceed with multiple Manhattan sized data centers.
KritVutGu 1y ago
> Otherwise, what’s the harm in saying AI guides you to the solution if you can attest to it being a good solution? For one: it threatens to make an entire generation of programmers lazy and stupid. They stop exercising their creative muscle. Writing and reviewing are different activities; both should be done continuously. This is perfectly observable with a foreign language. If you stop actively using a foreign language after learning it really well, your ability to speak it fades pretty quickly, while your ability to understand it fades too, but less quickly.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago

I guess it's just different kinds of people. I have used Copilot to generate code I barely understand (stuff for a microcontroller project, nothing important) but I wouldn't in a thousand years say I wrote it. I broadly understand how it works, and like, if someone wanted to see it, I'd show them. But like... how can you take pride in something you didn't make?

mattgreenrocks 1y ago
Not making the thing is a point in favor of LLMs for some of these people I suspect. So the pride in work thing is just not high on the list of incentives. I don’t get it at all. Feels like modernity is often times just inventing pale shadows of things with more addictive hooks to induce needlessly dependent behavior.
- KritVutGu 1y ago
  > the pride in work thing is just not high on the list of incentives Thanks for putting it so well. That is what hurts. A lot. Taking pride out of work, especially creative work, makes the world a worse place; it makes life less worth living. > inventing pale shadows of things Yes.

blurbleblurble 1y ago

That's just not true. I have 20 years of dev experience and also am using these tools. I won't commit slop. I'm open to being transparent about my usage of AI but tbh right now there's so much bias and vitriol coming from people afraid of these new tools that in the haze of their fear I don't trust people will actually take the time to neutrally determine whether or not the code is actually slop. I've had manually written, well thought through, well conceived, rough around the edges code get called "AI slop" by a colleague (who I very much respect and have a good relationship with) who admittedly hadn't had a chance to thoroughly understand the code yet. If I just vibe-coded something and haven't looked at the code myself, that seems like a necessary thing to disclose. But beyond that, if the code is well understood and solid, I feel that I'd be clouding the conversation by unnecessarily bringing the tools I used into it. If I understand the code and feel confident in it, whether I used AI or not seems irrelevant and distracting. This policy is just shoving the real problem under the rug. Generative AI is going to require us to come up with better curation/filtering/selection tooling, in general. This heuristic of "whether or not someone self-disclosed using LLMs" just doesn't seem very useful in the long run. Maybe it's a piece of the puzzle but I'm pretty sure there are more useful ways to sift through PRs than that. Line count differences, for example. Whether it was a person with an LLM or a 10x coder without one, a PR that adds 15000 lines is just not likely to be it.

eschaton 1y ago
You should not just be open to being transparent, you need to understand that there will be times you will be required to be transparent about the tools you’ve used and the ultimate origin of your contributions, and that trying to evade or even push back against it is a huge red flag that you cannot be trusted to abide by your commitments. If you’re unwilling to stop using slop tools, then you don’t get to contribute to some projects, and you need to be accept that.
- blurbleblurble 1y ago
  Your blanket determination that the tools themselves are slop generators is an attitude I'm definitely not interested in engaging with in collaboration.
  - eschaton 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - blurbleblurble 1y ago
      I'd way sooner quit my job / not contribute than deal with someone who projects on me the way you have in this conversation.
      - eschaton 1y ago
        Enjoy being found out for fraudulently passing off work you didn’t do as your own then.
        blurbleblurble 1y ago
        Ironically as a practice I'm actually quite transparent about how I use LLMs and believe that destigmatising open conversation about use of these tools is actually really important, just not that it's a useful heuristic for whether or not some code is slop.

throwawaybob420 1y ago

Democratize X via boiling our oceans!!

blurbleblurble 1y ago
https://youtu.be/klW65MWJ1PY?t=3234 https://youtu.be/klW65MWJ1PY?t=3234 https://youtu.be/klW65MWJ1PY?t=1320 https://youtu.be/klW65MWJ1PY?t=1320 X sucks and should not be allowed to proceed with what they're doing in Memphis. Nor should Meta be allowed to proceed with multiple Manhattan sized data centers.

KritVutGu 1y ago

> Otherwise, what’s the harm in saying AI guides you to the solution if you can attest to it being a good solution? For one: it threatens to make an entire generation of programmers lazy and stupid. They stop exercising their creative muscle. Writing and reviewing are different activities; both should be done continuously. This is perfectly observable with a foreign language. If you stop actively using a foreign language after learning it really well, your ability to speak it fades pretty quickly, while your ability to understand it fades too, but less quickly.