David Gerard

there are people who attempt to distinguish AI-assisted autocomplete from substantially AI-assisted code from raw braindead Gas Town vibe coding

this is not a useful distinction as they *all* end up at the third one

you can tell when they start posting the *same* hype phrases all the others use

there is no moderation on the krokodil advocacy train

Mar 6 at 7:58pmWeb
Show threadmx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)Mar 6
@davidgerard we had language-model-assisted autocomplete in our emacs in 2013. it's called dabbrev-expand. we also have a random text generator, it's called dissociated-press. we even have a psychiatric chatbot, M-x doctor.
Show threadMoses IzumiMar 7
@davidgerard @atax1a
If I was doing a newsletter on LLM bollocks I'd have a column highlighting reliable, energy efficient solutions to the problems that they claim to solve.

I don't know if Microsoft bundling Visual Basic with every copy of Windows (getting the rubes acquainted with programming) would've prevented the vibecoding epidemic, but it would probably have mitigated it.
Show threadMoses IzumiMar 7
@atax1a @davidgerard
[not much of a programmer, but my ZDoom modding phase was pretty joyful (reading the docs and dissecting existing mods to shoehorn jetpacks into Doom)]
[it's mainly based around interpreted languages]
Show threadmx alex tax1a - 2020 (6)Mar 7

@moses_izumi @davidgerard game mod programming is, to us, unequivocally "programming", sorry, but this makes you a programmer

you have been assigned programmer at toot

Show threadMoses IzumiMar 7
@atax1a @davidgerard
it's been at least half a year a since I did anything with it
Show threadLanda Mar 7
@moses_izumi
I don’t think it rubs off so easily 😁
@atax1a @davidgerard
Show threadBloognooMar 7

@moses_izumi @davidgerard @atax1a

Office had 2/3rds of a visual basic built in for years just to get excel and access to run. It meant you could do rather a lot, including producing macro viruses that travelled by being passed about. The day you went to save a word doc and it would only save as a dot (template) you knew were in trouble - templates carried and executed scripts automatically so it was the preferred vector.

Quick Basic in MSDos had a much wider effect. MS deciding visual studio would cost a fortune took away a lot of citizen coder opportunities so we went to borland from magazine cover disks and CDs.

Only people interested in coding bothered at any point in this (a be it confused) timeline, and the number of previously respected coders who have programming literacy and have still gone all in AI is horrifying.

I suspect crypto currencies presoftened their heads but we didn't get to see that in public.

Show threadDavid GerardMar 7
@bloognoo @moses_izumi @atax1a i have seen a shocking number of people who saw through cryptos immediately fall for AI krokodil
Show threadMoses IzumiMar 7
@bloognoo @atax1a
I guess pinning "Batch Scripting for Dummies" to the desktop/homefolder would also have been an option.
Mostly focused on BASIC being Microsoft's bread&butter for first dozen years.

@davidgerard
Krokodil should be the name of a piracy focused KDE-adjacent media player (or games launcher) that only connects to the dodgiest sources.
(maybe just call it Knark, as a play on Krita).
Show threadLanda Mar 7

@davidgerard
Yes, it’s actually quite disconcerting to observe from up close.

@bloognoo @moses_izumi @atax1a

Show threadDaniel V.Mar 7

@davidgerard @bloognoo @moses_izumi @atax1a at old job, everyone that was super into crypto pivoted to AI the moment they could.

It is like they are hardwired to jump from grift to grift

Show threadBloognooMar 7
@dvandal @davidgerard @moses_izumi @atax1a
It's the promise of gravy tomorrow if you eat your bread dry today. It only takes a couple of guys who claim they got gravy early to sell the proposition.
Show threadBloognooMar 6
@davidgerard
It's a case of how fast the option you back turns your code to crap. AI code complete is death by 1000 slops
Show threadgaytabaseMar 6
@davidgerard there are people who as soon as you say ban LLM contributions tell you you can't have autocomplete then https://social.treehouse.systems/@dysfun/116178136908957771
Show threadNemoMar 7

@dysfun
I think that some people just don't get why "deterministic" is a very important property of a tool.

That some of the people not getting it are programmers boggles the mind.

@davidgerard

Show threadAnthonyMar 7
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I wrote about this in response to something absurd a certain booster said! https://bucci.onl/notes/Word-calculators-dont-add-up
Word calculators don't add up

Anthony Bucci's personal web site

Anthony Bucci
Show threadRootWyrm 🇺🇦Mar 7
@iinavpov @dysfun @davidgerard if you actually dealt with modern "programmers" you would not be surprised at all. Modern "engineers" - who are very much not - insist all things must be "idempotent!"
None of them can define it correctly. They simply insist that systems must never ever change from a defined state, and if it does, it must be destroyed and recreated. And if the chosen tool cannot do something, then that thing is not possible to be "idempotent."
Show threadkgndiueMar 7
@iinavpov @dysfun @davidgerard As a programming statistician i do do prefer my code being deterministic. Reproducibility is a desired feature, not only in science.
Show threadKnud JahnkeMar 7

@iinavpov @dysfun @davidgerard

Turing Machines are so 20th century!

Show threadNemoMar 7
@knud
and of course the termination problem is not at all an issue...
@dysfun @davidgerard
Show threaddraNgNonMar 7
@iinavpov as a career release engineer I'm entirely unsurprised at programmers not understanding the importance of determinism @dysfun @[email protected]
Show threadKrutonium://Mar 7

@dysfun @davidgerard

To be entirely fair, there is a bit of accidental nuance here.

If you grab just about any Major IDE today, most of them will have auto-complete or "Intellisense" as Microsoft called it - But if you grab any recent release, you'll also find that they're assisting that Intellisense with an LLM.

So unless you go in and explicitly disable it, you do kinda end up in a situation where you can't ban AI without also specifying that code made with the default settings of a lot of commerical IDE's isn't allowed.

(And honestly as good as IntelliSense is, an LLM helping surface the likely best option to the top is actually kinda helpful?)

That said you can just turn that off - I have.

Show threadDavid GerardMar 7
@krutonium @dysfun that's a very mastodon answer, but also clearly not the subject here
Show threadKrutonium://Mar 7

@davidgerard @dysfun I disagree! The sub-subject was, essentially, is autocomplete an LLM contribution.

And the answer is... It depends.

As for the root subject, sure, you're right, it's off topic, but it is still related to it.

Show threadMark HarrisMar 8
@dysfun @davidgerard Which says that they understand "AI" is not actually intelligent, but just a fancier version of autocomplete which was invented by Chinese scientists and linguists in the 1950s, according to Wikipedia.
Show threadSteve WilliamsMar 8
@dysfun @davidgerard Muppets complaining about puppets.
Show threadPaco HopeMar 7
@davidgerard This post is actually too meme-dense for me. I don’t get the references to Gas Town and krocodil. What are they?
Show threadNeo EhproqueMar 7
@paco @davidgerard I assumed it was this but may be wrong about it; no idea what gas town is, either
Show threadNiels AbildgaardMar 7
@ehproque @paco @davidgerard gas town is an AI agent orchestration tool by Yegge. You'll find lots on it if you search "gas town ai". Here's one of David's posts on it: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/22/steve-yegges-gas-town-vibe-coding-goes-crypto-scam/
Steve Yegge’s Gas Town: Vibe coding goes crypto scam

Steve Yegge is a renowned software developer. He’s done this for thirty-odd years. Senior engineer at Amazon then Google, blogger on the art of programming. Yegge was highly regarded. Then he got h…

Pivot to AI
Show threadbogosityMar 7
@nielsa @ehproque @paco @davidgerard
I don't know why he called it Gas town ai when Gasl*AI*ght was right there.
Show threadBloognooMar 8

@ehproque @paco @davidgerard

References to krokodil are made because it's a high of last resort. When your addiction has ripped everything else from you and you need to get higher, It's there.
The name comes from how it cracks and breaks the skin around the needle wounds that necrotise during use.
If you get on to it you're probably not coming back because the people who supply it and the 'friends' that showed you how to get it have no interest in your survival and you die in septic, necrotic inches in front of them.

Show threadmlenMar 7
@davidgerard If trains had feelings they'd be offended by the use of their name in this context (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_(locomotive) ). Last year I stood in a cab of one of the Swiss ones and it was beautiful, no computer in sight.
Crocodile (locomotive) - Wikipedia

Show threadmlenMar 7
@davidgerard I read up on that other slang meaning and still think that the train should be offended :)