lobsters score: 1 · tags: vcs, vibecoding
GitHub just made it feel like everyone was finally in the same room.
There are some who believe that this was a bug, not a feature.
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We seem doomed to learn over and over again that there is no global town square.
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Open Source became annoying for maintainers, but ironically agentic coding made it awesome for end users. For non-programmers, the benefits of open source used to be mostly indirect and/or theoretical, because they couldn’t actually modify the software themselves (learning to program is a major investment of time and effort, and a big barrier when someone just wants to avoid a bug or tweak a feature). But now users can say “Claude, fix it” and it tends to work well enough for a single user.
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Why not? It genuinely is amazing.
I recently got an iPod classic and none of the Linux apps that should have worked for uploading music to it did. So what do I do in this situation? I saw that libgpod exists, so now I have to spend hours learning and writing a program, or give up and install rockbox, or just plain give up?
No, I asked AI to make me a GTK 4 app, and it makes one in ten minutes.
I don’t use AI for personal projects because it sucks the fun out of doing them, but for troubleshooting problems on my computer that I don’t or couldn’t care to learn about, they are a revelation.
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Why not?
I’m not the parent poster, but I’ll give my stab at that question.
It’s because to some people (myself included, and I assume a lot of people on this website too) the process of discovery, of learning, of getting stuck, of despairing, of ahas, and of figuring shit out is the most amazing fun imaginable. After a hug from my loved ones, I scarcely know of a better feeling than having solved a hard problem (meaning a problem that was hard for me)! That’s why not!
In addition to being fun, we also find it useful (to anyone, also those who don’t find it fun) as a way of exercising one’s brain. As a researcher, I believe it’s also something that inherently drives people who seek out that profession.
Of course, everyone gets to pick their own fun. Lots of people seem to like singing and dancing, for instance. I don’t. But I understand enough about fun and inherent drive not to show up at a song retreat and ask “ugh, why do you guys even do this, skilled audio technicians can synthesize a much better voice than that!”
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It’s because to some people (myself included, and I assume a lot of people on this website too) the process of discovery, of learning, of getting stuck, of despairing, of ahas, and of figuring shit out is the most amazing fun imaginable. After a hug from my loved ones, I scarcely know of a better feeling than having solved a hard problem (meaning a problem that was hard for me)! That’s why not!
Okay, and like I said, I do too. The problem is that I don’t like doing that for everything in my life. Some problems are not actually hard, they are simply tedious (to me!).
Honestly the implication that I don’t is kind of insulting!
Of course, everyone gets to pick their own fun. Lots of people seem to like singing and dancing, for instance. I don’t. But I understand enough about fun and inherent drive not to show up at a song retreat and ask “ugh, why do you guys even do this, skilled audio technicians can synthesize a much better voice than that!”
That is simply not what I’m doing at all. I made an app, for my self, that saved me time to get back to solving the difficult problems that I enjoy solving. That doesn’t meant that someone who enjoys working in that domain would not have a fun time working on that problem, it just means I don’t want to wait around for them to get my iPod working
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Okay, and like I said, I do too. The problem is that I don’t like doing that for everything in my life. Some problems are not actually hard, they are simply tedious (to me!).
Of course. But lots of people who frequent this site do consider problems like
I saw that libgpod exists, so now I have to spend hours learning and writing a program
to be genuine fun! Again, nobody is saying that you have to share in our idea of fun. But you did ask why people would find LLMs “not awesome” (which is what you asked “why” to). And you got answers. Now you’re saying that those answers don’t apply to you. That’s fine. But they do apply to us who gave them!
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I’m not saying they’re awesome. I’m agreeing with the grandparent that says they are:
awesome for end users
You can dislike LLMs because they suck the fun out of programming, but some people don’t like programming so it doesn’t make sense to dislike how other people use them to avoid that!
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Even the most LLM-happy programmer I know is clear that you need to verify the LLM’s work. Does the end user who doesn’t like programming suffer through that verification? Or do they just use the output unchecked, which I assume you’d agree is not “awesome”?
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Can you explain this emotion logically so we can all understand it, despite the fact that it is absolutely obvious what your stance is? Make sure to not include anything difficult that necessitates us extending our thinking beyond what is in directly in front of our eyes or to do with our own personal desires.
I don’t know man, feels like you’re not allowed to feel emotions about these things. “This new power plant delivers 2x the power at 20x the carbon emissions, it’s awesome!”. It’s clear as day why someone is opposed. The feigned shock, as though half the populace doesn’t feel this way, is grating.
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What’s even more grating is that the Overton window has shifted so far that you’re not allowed to reference the negative externalities anymore. “Ethics aside” has become the modus operandi. Anyone who does goes into this is a killjoy and a loser.
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You’re being so vague and unspecific here that there’s no point in responding to you because I’d have to imagine what your point actually is.
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Let me clear it up: using LLMs is a disservice to yourself and the entire world and thinking they are “genuinely amazing” is quite sad.
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We’re on a programming forum, so it’s a given that people here care about the craft itself.
But there are people who don’t want to program. To them software is just a hassle standing between them and their goal.
That’s normal. Not everyone wants to cook fine cuisine, many people get fast food. Not everyone wants to make custom furniture from the finest oak, plenty are happy with IKEA, etc.
And now software is moving beyond artisanal passionately crafted projects, and machine-extruded code nuggets are on the menu.
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Craft vs. mass is a false equivalence. LLMs are not the IKEA of software as their products are created with precision. Writing code without LLMs is not using hand tools instead of power tools. I use efficient and precise power tools when I’m woodworking and when I’m programming. I cut rabbet joints on my table saw instead of cutting dovetails with a hand saw. I use Emacs instead of Notepad. LLMs are something else entirely because they are inherently probabilistic black boxes. They resemble slot machines a lot more than CNC machines.
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This is actually exactly why the GPL was/is viral: it recognizes that most end users can’t do the modifications themselves, but they still should be able to benefit like either by contracting someone else to do it, or choosing from a marketplace of other public modified versions what already have what they want. In theory, the viral part meant you didn’t have to do it yourself while still being able to benefit.
(in practice, of course, having the source code is often one of the smallest parts in modifying things anyway…)
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agentic coding made it awesome for end users.
And for programmers who are willing to use it carefully. My debugging time has gone to near-zero. “Here’s some log messages, and then a gdb backtrace of a crash. find out why”
10 minutes later, I have a code path for the error, and a fix. About 20% of the time the fix is garbage, but knowing what to fix makes it easy to know how to fix it.
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My general experience is that agents are so much better at everything else around software development other than writing code and I don’t understand why everyone focuses so much on it.
- Debugging complex issues? Great.
- Analyzing infra issues from logs? Huge timesaver.
- Quick prototyping and throwaway scripts? Awesome.
- Researching and summarizing stuff? Quite useful, although a bit unreliable.
- Writing code? Mostly garbage code that requires a rewrite to be maintainable.
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Writing code? Mostly garbage code that requires a rewrite to be maintainable.
LLMs have been trained on the Internet. And for anyone who’s seen the Internet, it’s full of crap.
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My debugging time has gone to near-zero. “Here’s some log messages, and then a gdb backtrace of a crash. find out why”
Over in embedded land, setting it up so that the harness has the ability to flash and debug over JTAG/SWD (gdb interface to the entire microcontroller) is absolutely wild, especially for hard-to-reproduce bugs. I can set up a monitoring loop at the end of the day, have the bug I’m hunting for trigger at 2AM, and have a report waiting for me when I wake up in the morning that includes 7 different debug steps that were automatically flashed and tested.
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Yes, it is mind boggling. A while back, there was a heisenbug in a distributed lighting controller I designed. I connected two boards to SWD, connected the serial bus to my scope, told Claude how to get to the scope over TCP, and let it loose. After a few hours it handed me a reproducible case and I was able to fix my hardware mistake that was glitching the serial port.
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A stranger sent them 300 lines of unsolicited changes, and they took a chance on it.
I feel like the probably read it and tested it and didn’t just “take a chance”
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AI slop PRs are the worst kind of work. They look like contributions, so you feel obligated to read them. They take real time to review, and then more time to explain why they’re wrong to someone (or something) that isn’t listening. That’s time not spent on the actual project, or with family, or sleeping.
We posted a statement saying that we would ban people who submitted slop PRs. That seems to have dropped the number of submissions quite nicely.
You should have zero tolerance for nonsense. When some wastes your time, it doesn’t matter much if they’re being lazy, idiotic, or malicious. They’re all DoS attacks. And they should not be tolerated.
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