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Changing how we develop Ladybird

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Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#421

Post by utopiah »

idbnstra wrote: post #387
utopiah wrote: post #358

Goodhart's law, again. I feel like 1/10 comment I make on HN are about this. So merged PR were until LLMs a good proxy for the ability to code and contribute to a software project. Consequently they were used to estimate if a candidate was potentially good for a position. Merged PR on popular project were thus precious credentials one could "trade" for potential work. Since then the desire to provide PR changed from…

what, in your opinion, are the new proxies?

I'm not sure. I didn't think about this seriously in an adversarial context.

What I can imagine though is that

- the value of merged PRs might drop (as it's not a good metric anymore)

- while the cost of submitting them goes up (as price per token is radically changing, e.g. Github announcement just this week)

so maybe it's also only temporary.

Also if all this is correct, including the value of PR on popular repository being more important, then the long tail of projects might not have to worry about this.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#422

Post by trumpdong »

thewebguyd wrote: post #420
Yokohiii wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source development has become more and more superficial aligning with modern social network characteristics. It's more important to have an contribution, a active commit history, a few stars as a proof of pixel fame than the intrinsic value of the contributions or projects. Before the rise of github, open source projects were heavily walled gardens. Little clubs that gave you a stare when you entered the room. G…

> I hope this spreads to all of the internet. It is. Unfortunately, its not happening with open platforms. Communities are migrating to private discord servers, and less is discussed in public/in the open. I think we should still separate "working in the open" from "allowing or not outside contributions." Outside contributions are fine to be denied, however I think work and discussions should still more or less happe…

World readable has become a liability as well. How many times has some random disagreement been blown up by observers and lead to people being kicked out of groups, jobs being lost, or SWAT raids?

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#423

Post by lukan »

Based-A wrote: post #416
dcrazy wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not strawmanning anything. I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping. Software engineering isn’t some holy magic that must be kept from the masses. I can go on YouTube and get step-by-step instructions on how to safely wire an entire house. In many jurisdictions I would even be allowed to do that. I can get instructions on how to completely redo a bathroom, down to the studs and up through the…

Assuming you're being genuine (which I have a hard time believing because your argument is quite literally a strawman, please read the definition), you're missing the context entirely. You can't conflate small DIY projects done around the house with developing software that thousands of people and institutions rely on. By all means you can go and watch a video on software development, but that does not entitle you to…

"You can't conflate small DIY projects done around the house with developing software that thousands of people and institutions rely on. "

Who claimed that?

That was the context:

"Fwiw, a non-technical employee in my workplace has begun submitting ai-generated prs to internal repos I maintain & they're of excellent quality, "

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#424

Post by Klonoar »

dcrazy wrote: post #404
Based-A wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, are you really going to strawman "engineering should be inherently disqualifying" into "so people shouldn't DIY in their own home"? Please try a little bit harder.

I’m not strawmanning anything. I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping. Software engineering isn’t some holy magic that must be kept from the masses. I can go on YouTube and get step-by-step instructions on how to safely wire an entire house. In many jurisdictions I would even be allowed to do that. I can get instructions on how to completely redo a bathroom, down to the studs and up through the…

Alright, I guess I'll take the bait. Not much else going on today anyway.

> I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping.

I am not gatekeeping. I am stating that we collectively exist in a professional caste and that will go away or lose influence if you let it do so. Other professional castes do this exact same brain exercise and that is why they have protections in place.

> Some people try to cling to their specializations and cry “class warfare” when threatened.

I'll be blunt and just state that I am post money and not remotely threatened by this stuff anymore. I am observing that software engineering as a profession is blindly giving away a ridiculous amount of leverage in the world - in the form of dollars and influence, the value of their labor - and more crucially doing it to themselves.

I will be fine whichever way this shakes out, and I don't really have a dog in this fight short of having spent decent time in the OSS space and finding it sad what it is turning in to.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#425

Post by infinet »

spacechild1 wrote: post #284
crabmusket wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The generalised form of this, which we are rapidly discovering, is that AI breaks the social contract that used to exist between an author and a reader (of prose, code, anything).

That's the most succinct way I have seen someone put it, thanks! It's really the same issue, no matter if it's software, online comments, e-mails, artworks, homework, etc. We engage because we expect to be interacting with the output of another human being. AI fundamentally betrays this expectation.

I wonder how many comments are from bots in this discussion. Few days ago there was a discussion of traffic stall at the strait of Hormuz on HN. One comment from an user with over 9000 Kama went like "I just checked the traffic on the road and it is normal ...". Unfortunately other bots are not as easy to spot as this one.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#426

Post by gedy »

progbits wrote: post #149
torben-friis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is certainly a certain... entitlement? (It's not the perfect word, but I fail to find a proper term) from some of the vibe crowd. Like an attachment to the output and refusal to accept that most of the work was not theirs. It is seen in the way they approach contributions but also in regular language. I created X, insistence that their 'curation' was very influencial to the output, difficulty to mention LLM con…

I've experienced the following sequence more than once at work, and I remain baffled by it each time: - Receive a huge vibecoded PR for complicated new feature. - Complain that this needs some design doc to figure out the right approach first. - Author says no need for design doc, easier to have vibed implementation and discuss the concrete code instead of abstract document. - I disagree (obviously), but review the P…

> helping them launch.

I think that's probably the key - sounds like you are at a place that rewards "launches" and not long term maintenance and so you are ruining their KPOs or promo packet or whatever.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#427

Post by dcrazy »

Based-A wrote: post #416
dcrazy wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not strawmanning anything. I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping. Software engineering isn’t some holy magic that must be kept from the masses. I can go on YouTube and get step-by-step instructions on how to safely wire an entire house. In many jurisdictions I would even be allowed to do that. I can get instructions on how to completely redo a bathroom, down to the studs and up through the…

Assuming you're being genuine (which I have a hard time believing because your argument is quite literally a strawman, please read the definition), you're missing the context entirely. You can't conflate small DIY projects done around the house with developing software that thousands of people and institutions rely on. By all means you can go and watch a video on software development, but that does not entitle you to…

Please re-read the specific comment I replied to. It was someone expressing indignation that a software engineer would accept “high-quality” PRs from a non-software engineer, accusing the poster of lacking “class consciousness.”

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#428

Post by jakolaptu »

Fraterkes wrote: post #66

I've been looking a lot at Godot (another big open source project) PRs lately, and there's been kind of a surge of wholy ai-generated PRs (both code and description). This is agains project-policy, so people creating these PRs usually get mildly told off. What's surprising is that while many submitters take that fairly well, some people get really indignant, essentially calling the maintainers ungrateful. It's kinda…

One could call a big lump of code a Tumor.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#429

Post by Klonoar »

thewebguyd wrote: post #415
Klonoar wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fwiw, a non-technical employee in my workplace has begun submitting ai-generated prs to internal repos I maintain & they're of excellent quality, with review feedback graciously received & expediently addressed, so this isn't a matter of the idiots not being technical, it's an attitude problem. It is hard for me to imagine another engineering discipline that would be totally fine accepting work from those who don't…

> hard for me to imagine another engineering discipline.... Well, that's already the case because you cant just call yourself an engineer and start signing off on projects. It's a legally protected title in a lot of places. You need a professional license, and can face legal liability for your decisions. Software engineering is not engineering. Software craftmanship or even architecture would be a more accurate term.…

> Well, that's already the case because you cant just call yourself an engineer and start signing off on projects. It's a legally protected title in a lot of places. You need a professional license, and can face legal liability for your decisions.

This was part of the implication of my point, yes.

> No idea what you mean by class solidarity. There are only two; the capital owning class, and then everyone else (the working class). Most devs are working class just like everyone else.

Yes, albeit a highly compensated portion of the working class. Software engineers should protect their own field a bit more.

> Unless you're proposing that software should be gatekept to the level of other engineering disciplines?

I do not like or want to use the term "gatekeeping" here, but yes, I think that software engineering should be held to a higher standard. You can't have it both ways.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#430

Post by dcrazy »

Klonoar wrote: post #424
dcrazy wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not strawmanning anything. I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping. Software engineering isn’t some holy magic that must be kept from the masses. I can go on YouTube and get step-by-step instructions on how to safely wire an entire house. In many jurisdictions I would even be allowed to do that. I can get instructions on how to completely redo a bathroom, down to the studs and up through the…

Alright, I guess I'll take the bait. Not much else going on today anyway. > I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping. I am not gatekeeping. I am stating that we collectively exist in a professional caste and that will go away or lose influence if you let it do so. Other professional castes do this exact same brain exercise and that is why they have protections in place. > Some people try to cling…

> I am stating that we collectively exist in a professional caste and that will go away or lose influence if you let it do so. Other professional castes do this exact same brain exercise and that is why they have protections in place.

I consider this mode of thinking selfish and anti-progress. It’s pretty much exactly what Americans decry about unions.

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