4 ms·

Forget utterly groundbreaking things, I want to hear maintainers of complex, actively developed, and widely used open-source projects (e.g. ffmpeg, curl, openss

Forget utterly groundbreaking things, I want to hear maintainers of complex, actively developed, and widely used open-source projects (e.g. ffmpeg, curl, openssh, sqlite) start touting a massive uptick in positive contributions, pointing to a concrete influx of high-quality AI-assisted commits. If AI is indeed a 10x force multiplier, shouldn't these projects have seen 10 years' worth of development in the last year? Don't get me wrong, AI is at least as game-changing for programming as StackOverflow and Google were back in the day. Being able to not only look up but automatically integrate things into your codebase that already exist in some form in the training data is incredibly useful. I use it every day, and it's saved me hours of work for certain specific tasks [0]. For tasks like that, it is indeed a 10x productivity multiplier. But since these tasks only comprise a small fraction of the full software development process, the rest of which cannot be so easily automated, AI is not the overall 10x force multiplier that some claim. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45511128 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45511128

zwnow 10mo ago
> Being able to not only look up but automatically integrate things into your codebase that already exist in some form in the training data is incredibly useful. Until it decides to include code it gathered from a stackoverflow post 15 years ago probably introducing security related issues or makes up libraries on the go or even worse, tries to make u install libs that were part of a data poisoning attack.
- MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
  It's no different from supervising a naïve junior engineer who also copy/pastes from 15 year old SO posts (a tale as old as time): you need to carefully review and actually grok the code the junior/AI writes. Sometimes this ends up taking longer than writing it yourself, sometimes it doesn't. As with all decisions in delegating work, the trick is knowing ahead of time whether this will be the case.
  - spzb 10mo ago
    Naive junior engineers eventually learn and become competent senior engineers. LLMs forget everything they "learn" as soon as the context window gets too big.
    - MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
      Very true! I liken AI to having an endless supply of newly hired interns with near-infinite knowledge but intern-level skills.
    - cheevly 10mo ago
      There are like a dozen well-established ways to overcome this. Learn how to use the basic tools and patterns my dude.
  - zwnow 10mo ago
    I have yet to see a junior trying to install random/non existing libs.
    - pigpop 10mo ago
      If you forced them to try it from memory without giving them access to the web you sure would.
spzb 10mo ago
curl in particular is being plagued by AI-slop security reports which are actively slowing development by forcing the maintainers to triage crap when they could be working on new features (or, you know, enjoying their lives) eg https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/15/curl_creator_mulls_nixing_bug/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/15/curl_creator_mulls_ni...
- leleat 10mo ago
  On the other hand, we had this story[^1], where the maintainer of curl mentions a a bunch of actual useful reports by someone using AI tools. [^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45449348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45449348
anthonypasq 10mo ago
the creator of claude code said on twitter he hasnt opened an ide in a month and merged 200 prs.
- MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
  Might the creator of Claude Code have some … incentives … to develop like that, or at least claim that he does? As someone who frequently uses Claude Code, I cannot say that a year's worth of features/improvements have been added in the last month. It bears repeating: if AI is truly a 10x force multiplier, you should expect to see a ~year's worth of progress in a month.
  - simonw 10mo ago
    Opus 4.5 is just a few days over a month old. Boris would have had access to that for a while before its release though.
    - shimman 10mo ago
      Boris is someone that is employed by Anthropic and has a massive stake in them going public, standing to make millions. They are by definition a biased source and should not be referenced as such.
      - simonw 10mo ago
        Nobody here claimed that Boris wasn't a biased source. I do however think he is not an actively dishonest source. When he says "In the last thirty days, I landed 259 PRs -- 497 commits, 40k lines added, 38k lines removed. Every single line was written by Claude Code + Opus 4.5." I believe he is telling the truth. That's what dogfooding your own product looks like! https://twitter.com/bcherny/status/2004887829252317325 https://twitter.com/bcherny/status/2004887829252317325
      - theshrike79 10mo ago
        I think it might be more about the fact that he has free and unlimited access to Opus =)
simonw 10mo ago
> I want to hear maintainers of complex, actively developed, and widely used open-source projects (e.g. ffmpeg, curl, openssh, sqlite) start touting a massive uptick in positive contributions That's obviously not going to happen, because AI tools can't solve for taste. Just because a developer can churn out working code with an LLM doesn't mean they have the skills to figure out what the right working code to contribute to a project is, and how to do so in a way that makes the maintainers lives easier and not harder. That skill will remain rare. (Also SQLite famously refuses to accept external contributions, but that's a different issue.)
- SQLite 10mo ago
  No, Simon, we don't "refuse". We are just very selective and there is a lot of paperwork involved to confirm the contribution is in the public domain and does not contaminate the SQLite core with licensed code. Please put the false narrative that "SQLite refuses outside contributions" to rest. The bar is high to get there, but the SQLite code base does contain contributed code.
  - simonw 10mo ago
    Thanks for the correction, and sorry for getting that wrong. I genuinely didn't know that. Found that paperwork here: https://www.sqlite.org/copyright-release.html https://www.sqlite.org/copyright-release.html I will make sure not to spread that misinformation further in the future! Update: I had a look in fossil and counted 38 contributors: brew install fossil fossil clone https://www.sqlite.org/src sqlite.fossil fossil sql -R sqlite.fossil " SELECT user, COUNT(*) as commits FROM event WHERE type='ci' GROUP BY user ORDER BY commits DESC " Blogged about this (since it feels important to help spread the correction about this): https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/29/copyright-release/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/29/copyright-release/
    - QuinnyPig 10mo ago
      Man, your behavior when you realize you got something wrong is something the rest of us can aspire to. This is one of the things I like the best about you.

zwnow 10mo ago

> Being able to not only look up but automatically integrate things into your codebase that already exist in some form in the training data is incredibly useful. Until it decides to include code it gathered from a stackoverflow post 15 years ago probably introducing security related issues or makes up libraries on the go or even worse, tries to make u install libs that were part of a data poisoning attack.

MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
It's no different from supervising a naïve junior engineer who also copy/pastes from 15 year old SO posts (a tale as old as time): you need to carefully review and actually grok the code the junior/AI writes. Sometimes this ends up taking longer than writing it yourself, sometimes it doesn't. As with all decisions in delegating work, the trick is knowing ahead of time whether this will be the case.
- spzb 10mo ago
  Naive junior engineers eventually learn and become competent senior engineers. LLMs forget everything they "learn" as soon as the context window gets too big.
  - MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
    Very true! I liken AI to having an endless supply of newly hired interns with near-infinite knowledge but intern-level skills.
  - cheevly 10mo ago
    There are like a dozen well-established ways to overcome this. Learn how to use the basic tools and patterns my dude.
- zwnow 10mo ago
  I have yet to see a junior trying to install random/non existing libs.
  - pigpop 10mo ago
    If you forced them to try it from memory without giving them access to the web you sure would.

spzb 10mo ago

curl in particular is being plagued by AI-slop security reports which are actively slowing development by forcing the maintainers to triage crap when they could be working on new features (or, you know, enjoying their lives) eg https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/15/curl_creator_mulls_nixing_bug/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/15/curl_creator_mulls_ni...

leleat 10mo ago
On the other hand, we had this story[^1], where the maintainer of curl mentions a a bunch of actual useful reports by someone using AI tools. [^1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45449348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45449348

anthonypasq 10mo ago

the creator of claude code said on twitter he hasnt opened an ide in a month and merged 200 prs.

MontyCarloHall 10mo ago
Might the creator of Claude Code have some … incentives … to develop like that, or at least claim that he does? As someone who frequently uses Claude Code, I cannot say that a year's worth of features/improvements have been added in the last month. It bears repeating: if AI is truly a 10x force multiplier, you should expect to see a ~year's worth of progress in a month.
- simonw 10mo ago
  Opus 4.5 is just a few days over a month old. Boris would have had access to that for a while before its release though.
  - shimman 10mo ago
    Boris is someone that is employed by Anthropic and has a massive stake in them going public, standing to make millions. They are by definition a biased source and should not be referenced as such.
    - simonw 10mo ago
      Nobody here claimed that Boris wasn't a biased source. I do however think he is not an actively dishonest source. When he says "In the last thirty days, I landed 259 PRs -- 497 commits, 40k lines added, 38k lines removed. Every single line was written by Claude Code + Opus 4.5." I believe he is telling the truth. That's what dogfooding your own product looks like! https://twitter.com/bcherny/status/2004887829252317325 https://twitter.com/bcherny/status/2004887829252317325
    - theshrike79 10mo ago
      I think it might be more about the fact that he has free and unlimited access to Opus =)

simonw 10mo ago

> I want to hear maintainers of complex, actively developed, and widely used open-source projects (e.g. ffmpeg, curl, openssh, sqlite) start touting a massive uptick in positive contributions That's obviously not going to happen, because AI tools can't solve for taste. Just because a developer can churn out working code with an LLM doesn't mean they have the skills to figure out what the right working code to contribute to a project is, and how to do so in a way that makes the maintainers lives easier and not harder. That skill will remain rare. (Also SQLite famously refuses to accept external contributions, but that's a different issue.)

SQLite 10mo ago
No, Simon, we don't "refuse". We are just very selective and there is a lot of paperwork involved to confirm the contribution is in the public domain and does not contaminate the SQLite core with licensed code. Please put the false narrative that "SQLite refuses outside contributions" to rest. The bar is high to get there, but the SQLite code base does contain contributed code.
- simonw 10mo ago
  Thanks for the correction, and sorry for getting that wrong. I genuinely didn't know that. Found that paperwork here: https://www.sqlite.org/copyright-release.html https://www.sqlite.org/copyright-release.html I will make sure not to spread that misinformation further in the future! Update: I had a look in fossil and counted 38 contributors: brew install fossil fossil clone https://www.sqlite.org/src sqlite.fossil fossil sql -R sqlite.fossil " SELECT user, COUNT(*) as commits FROM event WHERE type='ci' GROUP BY user ORDER BY commits DESC " Blogged about this (since it feels important to help spread the correction about this): https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/29/copyright-release/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/29/copyright-release/
  - QuinnyPig 10mo ago
    Man, your behavior when you realize you got something wrong is something the rest of us can aspire to. This is one of the things I like the best about you.