i agree with most of that. but ai isn’t going anywhere, so might as well use it. moral outrage won’t uninvent it.

of course

Replies have their own visibility settings and audiences. Your follower could have changed it to public or to their followers

ah yes, the classic “i have never used it, but let me explain to you how it works.” truly the pinnacle of engineering wisdom.

it is genuinely mind-boggling. people who never used the tools, or know people who tried them and got shit results, confidently explain to people who use them successfully every day that they do not work. at some point, this stops being skepticism and starts looking like an ideology. the irony is fucking spectacular.

1. of course an experienced engineer can recognize bad code. nobody disputes that.
2. but seeing bad code does not tell you what a tool can produce when used well.
3. to judge that, you need to understand how to use the tool, not just inspect its output.

these are three different things. you keep arguing the first while ignoring the other two.

@eve my point is that ai's environmental impact is constantly presented as some enormous problem, while in reality, even 170 hours of agent use can have a smaller footprint than eating a burger. and that is before we even compare it with things like driving an suv, flying, air conditioning, or heating a house. somehow, those rarely get the same level of outrage. perspective matters.

open-weight models are pretty capable now

ai does not have to be perfect to be useful. repeatability comes from tests, reviews, and engineering discipline. you are describing a tool that needs to be managed and pretending that proves it is useless.

@negative12dollarbill why should i disclose what software i work on? i do not work on open source, and i have nothing to prove to you. if you are genuinely curious, you can always look me up. somehow i suspect you are more interested in arguing than finding out.

i never said bigger is better. @Gargron brought up the size of mastodon as an argument for his authority, so i was responding in the same terms. not sure where you got the idea that i was comparing codebase sizes.

@TeflonTrout please go fuck yourself properly

please educate yourself https://lore.kernel.org/linux-media/CAHk-=wi4zC+Ze8e+p3tMv8TtG_80KzsZ1syL9anBtmEh5Z40vg@mail.gmail.com/

on that I completely agree, but it does not mean the tool is bad, you just need to know how to use it

ok, look, you probably know who Linus Torvalds is, right? if not google it. then check it out: https://thenewstack.io/torvalds-linux-ai-stance/

i have bad news for you: you do not know how to use it.

i do not know whose opinion you consider authoritative. how about Linus? he is famous for being strict about code quality, yet even he sees AI as a useful tool.

jesus fucking christ, you are arguing in circles. if you have seen good prs, then great, the tools can produce good code. if you have only seen bad ones, you know they can produce bad code. neither tells you what happens when someone who actually knows how to use the tools uses them.

this is pretty basic logic. I think I am done here

looks like half the people in this thread have never used the tools themselves but have very strong opinions about them. that is fine, but it is impossible to have a meaningful discussion when people argue from assumptions rather than experience.

uggh, please read what i wrote again. we are going in circles. AI can produce shitty PRs when used badly. maybe that is what he has seen, i have no idea. used properly, it can produce great PRs. looking at PRs alone does not tell you what the tools are capable of when used well. to judge that, you need to actually use them. which he has explicitly said he does not want to do. and that is fine.

food critics do not need to be chefs, but if you have never cooked, maybe do not lecture chefs about what their kitchen can produce

i have been a software engineer for 30 years and review 10–30 pull requests a day. the majority involve ai-generated code. i see firsthand what these tools produce, good and bad. you are arguing about what you imagine they can do, while i work with the results every day. code review is code review, regardless of who wrote the code.