hendrik

Lol. For someone who says they expect other people to learn something, you’re a bit short in supply. I mean this would be an opportunity for someone (me) to learn something. But a down-vote won’t do it. And lessons on what not to do (discuss 2.5h, expect it to think) don’t lead anywhere either. I’d need to know what to do in my situation. Or where to find such information?!

Or was it because I said I value efficiency and for some reason you’re team bloat? I seriously don’t get it.

Not really. I mean I sucked at a lot of things. Failed over and over again until I got good at something.

Look at successful billionaires and how many startups they crashed before succeeding.

Failure is part of the process. It’s part of life and the point is, you better find a healthy way to deal with it. Being determined and trying over and over again is a necessary character trait if you wanna succeed at something or become good at it.

I don’t have a definite answer to it. Could be the case I’m somehow intelligent enough to remember all the quirks of C and C++. Eat a book on my favorite microcontroller in 3 days and remember details about the peripherals and processor. But somehow I’m too stupid to figure out how AI works. I can’t rule it out. At least I’ve tried.

I still think microcontroller programming is way more fun than coding some big Node.JS application with a bazillion of dependencies.

And I sometimes wish people would write an instant messenger like we have 4MB of RAM available and not eat up 1GB with their Electron app, which then also gets flagged by the maintainers for using some components that have open vulnerabilities, twice a year.

I mean I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to complain about it.

But yeah, software development is always changing. And sometimes I wonder if things are for the better or the worse.

I’ve had a lot of bad experience with embedded stuff and trying to let AI do it for me. I mostly ended up wasting time. I always thought it must be because these LLMs are mainly trained on regular computer code, without these constraints and that’s why they always smuggle in silly mistakes. And while fixing one thing, they break a different thing. But could also be my stupidity.
I’ve had a way better time letting it do webfrontends, CSS, JavaScript… even architecture.

But I don’t think this (specifically) is one of the big issues with AI anyway. People are free to learn whatever they want. There’s a lot if niches in computer science. And diversity is a good thing.

We also have issues with young people in the industry. As some junior developer stuff is now done by AI, we’re lacking more and more positions to start in, and learn the ropes. And you can’t start out as a senior, either. So that got more complicated as well.

Haha. I think there’s often a rough idea on what kind of programmer people are, judging by their opinion on these AI tools.

Have you tried arguing with your AI assistant for 2.5h straight about memory allocation, and why it can’t just take some example code from some documentation? And it keeps doing memory allocation wrong? Scold it over and over again to use linear algebra instead of trigonometric functions which won’t cut it? Have you tried connecting Claude Code to your oscilloscope and soldering iron to see what kind of mess its code produces?

I’m fairly sure there are reasons to use AI in software development. And there are also good reasons to do without AI, just use your brain and be done with it in one or two hours instead of wasting half a workday arguing and then still ending up doing it yourself 😅

I don’t think these programmers are idiots. There’s a lot of nuance to it. And it’s not easy at all to apply AI correctly so it ends up saving you time.

Good comment. The main issue is this: Back in the day I could have a quick look at the code and tell within a minute whether something was coded by a 12 year old or by some experienced programmer. Whether someone put in so much effort, I could be pretty sure they’re gonna maintain the project. Put in some love because it solves some use-case in their life and it’s going to do the same for me. Assess their skill-level in languages I’m fluent in.

These days not so much. All code quality looks pretty much the same. Could be utter garbage. Could be good software, could be maintained. Could be anything, Claude always makes it look good on a first glance. There’s also new ulterior motives why software exists. And it takes me a good amount of time and detective work to find out. And I often can’t rely on other people either, because they’re either enraged or bots and the entire arguments are full of falsehoods.

As a programmer and avid Linux user, I rely a lot on other people’s software. And the Free Software community indeed used to be super reliable. I could take libraries for my software projects. Could install everything from the Debian repo and I never had any issues. It’s mostly rock solid. There were never any nefarious things going on.

And now we added deceit to the mix. Try to keep the true nature of projects a secret. And i think that’s super unhealthy. I had a lot of trust in my supply chain. And now I’m gonna need to put in a lot of effort to keep it that way. And not fall prey to some shiny new thing which might be full of bugs and annoyances and security vulnerabilities, and gone by tomorrow once someone stops their OpenClaw… Yet the project looks like some reliable software.

And I don’t share the opinion on sandboxing. Linux doesn’t have sandboxing (on the Desktop). That’s a MacOS thing (and Android and iOS). All we have is Flatpak. But you’re forcing me to install 10GB of runtimes. Pass on the distro maintainers who always had a second pair of eyes on what software does, if it had tracking or weird things in it, whether it had security vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Maintainers who also provided a coherent desktop experience to me. And now I’m gonna pull software from random people/upstreams on the internet, and trust them? Really? Isn’t that just worse in any aspect?

And wasn’t there some line in devops? Why is it now every operators job to do static analysis on the millions of moving parts on their servers… Isn’t that a development job?

And I don’t think Flatpak’s permission system is even fine-granular enough. Plus how does it even help in many cases? If I want to use a password manager, it obviously needs access to my passwords. I can’t sandbox that away. So if the developers decide to steal them, there’s no sandboxing stopping them in any way. Same for all the files on my Nextcloud. So I don’t see how sandboxing is gonna help with any of that.

I just don’t think it’s a good argument. I mean if you have a solution on how sandboxing helps with these things, feel free to teach me. I don’t see a way around trust and honesty as the basic building blocks. And then sandboxing/containerization etc on top to help with some specific (limited) attack vectors.

I mean, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying we need to ban AI in software development. I’m also not saying 12 year olds aren’t allowed to code. I did. And some kids do great things. That in itself isn’t any issue.

Yeah. Maybe it’s time to adopt some new rule in the selfhosted community. Mandating disclosure. Because we got several AI coded projects in the last few days or weeks.

I just want some say in what I install on my computer. And not be fooled by someone into using their software.

I mean I know why people deliberately hide it, and say “I built …” when they didn’t. Because otherwise there’s an immediate shitstorm coming in. But deceiving people about the nature of the projects isn’t a proper solution either. And it doesn’t align well with the traditional core values of Free Software. I think a lot of value is lost if honesty (and transparency) isn’t held up anymore within our community.

Did you build it, though, or did Claude code it?

Yes. I think determinism a misunderstood concept. In computing, it means exact same input leads to always the same output. Could be a correct result or entirely wrong, though. As long as it stays the same, it’s deterministic. There’s some benefit in introducing randomness to AI. But it can be run in an entirely deterministic way as well. Just depends on the settings. (It’s called “temperature”.)