Ariadne Conill 🐰1d ago

I saw a wild take where someone said distributions are fascist for using systemd because systemd now uses Claude for code review.

okay. fine, I guess.

but if we are rejecting dependencies that use AI tooling, where do we go?

seriously. where do we go?

if the Linux kernel is using AI tools for codegen, then where do we go?

FreeBSD? I would put money on it that they use AI tools.

OpenBSD? NetBSD? HURD?

do we hard fork every dependency that is now tainted? do we even have the resources to do it?

FreeBSD and Illumos are the only ones reasonably close in the tech tree and I suspect both use AI tools too, as their development, like Linux, is driven by capital.

Show threadDistractions1d ago

@ariadne well, as a developer who has been writing linux kernel code since back in about 2001 or so (actually I think it was something alsa/bluetooth related so probably user space at that point, but … I remember digging deep) - I don’t think it’s feasible to continue OSS without making use of gen AI in development.

Its like saying we can’t use C, everything has to be ASM.

That doesn’t mean developers don’t need to read or understand the code anymore before committing. But a hard ban? Idk.

Show threadAriadne Conill 🐰1d ago

@distractions why is it infeasible to continue OSS without using GenAI?

that seems like an absolutely *wild* claim.

Show threadDistractions1d ago

@ariadne well, because the world already has been changed. That’s a historic hard fact. Pretending it hasn’t won’t stop the wheel from turning. Anyone can set up a new project on GitHub (or CodeBerg for that matter) and put anything up there, and if it somehow does the trick, people won’t care how it does. It’s sad, but that’s how things progress.

I believe it more worthwhile to harden our processes **around** and with gAI, not against it. Because the train will roll.

Show threadTodd Knarr22h ago
@distractions @ariadne My experience with genAI (about a year and a half now involving code) is that it's hardly inevitable. It sounds like it is, because the one thing genAI is good at is creating plausible, highly believable text without regard to facts or reality. It's _really_ good at that. So are salesweasels, BTW, and we know all about trusting _them_. But when it comes to code, it falls flat at the "copy & paste" stage.
Show threadTodd Knarr22h ago
@distractions @ariadne Watching it work, it follows a pattern I use myself when I'm starting on an unfamiliar codebase using unfamiliar tech: find code that does something similar to what I want, copy it and start tweaking it until it does what I need. You can do a lot with that, but you're limited by what you can find examples of. And inevitably the most pressing problems are ones you _can't_ find examples of, if you could they'd be common enough they wouldn't be pressing now would they?
Show threadTodd Knarr

@distractions @ariadne I'm watching this happen at work, and I'm seeing more and more cases where the resulting code just isn't very good, or contains subtle killer bugs that the authors don't understand. I'm also seeing devs stuck when genAI fails, they just stop instead of doing the work on their own.

This is _not_ the kind of environment we need in FOSS, nor one that's going to be successful long-term.

Mar 28 at 5:14pmWeb
Show threadTodd Knarr22h ago
@distractions @ariadne Honestly, this is about the fifth attempt in my lifetime at "don't need developers to create applications", and I doubt it's going to end any better than the previous iterations.
Show threadDistractions21h ago
@tknarr @ariadne I hate to say it; that’s a nice strawman. At no point did I claim we „don’t have to write code anymore“. It changes how we write code. My claim is that gAI is a tool that helps us to solve one part of coding work, and if used correctly, we can make that beneficial. I can’t proof that obviously; but what I am saying is: condemning a tool because it can’t solve everything, or can be misused, doesn’t make it a bad tool. Every tool needs correct usage.
Show threadTodd Knarr5m ago

@distractions @ariadne The people pushing genAI certainly are claiming it's that. Thing is, all the attempts before quickly stopped being that as it became apparent they couldn't. They started scaling back expectations, just as with genAI. The hard stuff, genAI doesn't do nearly as well as a senior dev would and takes longer.

As for proof, you can't because the evidence says otherwise. Look at the results of every study done using decent methodology and you find the same conclusion:...

Show threadTodd Knarr5m ago
@distractions @ariadne ... it takes longer to complete a task using genAI than it does for the devs to just do it without genAI. It's not a matter of good or bad usage, genAI is just a poor tool.