Changing how we develop Ladybird • Hacker News Board

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#461

Post by LeFantome » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

maplethorpe wrote: post #283

Their loss. Think about it. Anthropic just reported that their codebase is now improving itself. We're moments away from every open source repo being able to do the same. Think of it like torrenting — you'll be able to open your repo to the public, and have a stream of code flow in from millions of contributors. More code than you could ever write in ten lifetimes, uploaded to your repository in a matter of days. Lad…

Is your point that Anthropic is now accepting code submissions to Opus 5.0 from “millions of contributors”? No?

Ladybird uses AI to code. This is not them banning AI. This is them not wanting to take responsibility for the code WE write with AI. They think outside code contributions are raising their risk and slowing them down.

I dislike this change but it does not track to what you are saying at all.

Like always with Open Source, if you really believe what you are saying, fork the project. Outrun them if you can.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#462

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

patates wrote: post #131

When AI first happened, I was afraid I was going to eventually lose my job. And while I've been lucky since, many did, and that hurt a lot. When people are losing something to automation, regardless of the economics of the situation, you cheer for the humans, or at least hope that society keeps being fair to those who are most affected. Now I see communities being affected. When you kill PRs, you not only kill the co…

AI first happened in the 1950s

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#463

Post by lucideer » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

Klonoar wrote: post #460

lucideer wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooof. This is a big topic - I understand where you're coming from, but it's a common sentiment & one I've recently come to disagree more & more with. Firstly: class solidarity. The apparent death of (or at least notable decline in) class solidarity is popularly lumped upon software engineers because they're relatively highly paid, but it's equally as absent in newly created positions (mainly within the IT sector) at…

> It's in no way specific to software engineering as a role nor to high salary positions. Yes, I agree. We are, however, on a site and in a thread that is dedicated to the role of software engineering, so I don't really care about the wider discussion at the moment. My sole input here is that software engineering has not protected itself as a field, and it will now pay the price for that.

> My sole input here is that software engineering has not protected itself as a field, and it will now pay the price for that.

& my point in raising that this is not an issue that's unique to software engineering is to argue that the demons you're proposing software engineers protect themselves from are distractions from the root cause. You're proposing software engineers need to protect themselves from something that's specific to their field when the problem is holistic.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#464

Post by WolfeReader » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:17 PM UTC

groan wrote: post #458

These posts need a BPUF that calls out LLM-generated PRs. No need to read between the lines and wax poetic with walls of text.

Opening lines: "Today we’re changing how code enters the Ladybird project.

We will no longer accept public pull requests. From now on, code changes to the Ladybird codebase will only be introduced by project maintainers."

Seems like a good bottom-line-up-front to me.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#465

Post by WolfeReader » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:22 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #240

So the new way to contribute is to fork Make a better Ladybird successfully to the point the original contributors take notice. If the barriers to doing that are truly lower, then it should be easier.

Where "better" means you and your maintainers spend all your time scrutinizing volumes of code from token prediction machines?

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#466

Post by zzzeek » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

jakolaptu wrote: post #431

lucideer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pre-ai reaction was also unwarranted: committing a massive amount of potentially unmaintainable handwritten code isn't a necessarily positive contribution and any decent engineer (or person tbh) would understand that & not expect gratitude, no matter how concerted their effort. In that context, I wouldn't expect an idiot (of which there has always been far too many in this industry) to change their behaviour in a…

But your company employs said individual, whereas arbitrary drive-by patches from randos on open source projects with no consequence of submitting a mountain of garbage. The answer: require a written proposal for changes before a patch will even be considered unless it is sufficiently small. Also fight AI with AI: have a bot auto reject patches unless they can link to a previously approved enhancement document. Folks…

yes. github has very minimal controls for PRs (either shut them off completely, or not at all) but through GH webhooks you can essentially script "auto-close" of PRs that dont have correct preliminary approval.

it's time for there to be some really nice workflow tooling that people can plug into their GH repos that does this and other things.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#467

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:27 PM UTC

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.…

> There are no devs that will go to prison if what they produce has, say, a major vulnerability. That alone disqualifies it from being engineering. There's no licensure, there's no liability

The only problem in your theory is that none of those things has anything to do with "engineering".

You're arguing that a surgeon who removes a burst appendix in a hygienic environment isn't "practicing medicine" if they aren't licensed to do that in the jurisdiction where it happens. You'd have to be insane to believe that.

Engineering means solving problems. A license is a license. They're unrelated concepts.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#468

Post by Sharlin » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

dcrazy wrote: post #378

Sharlin wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m never getting accustomed to the fact that there’s now an entire generation of coders who have never seen a world where "everything" is open-source and developed in the bazaar style (are people these days even aware of the metaphor or Raymond’s book?), a world in which the frigging Microsoft is a major OSS vendor and in charge of facilitating most of the open-source programming on the planet. Try explaining that t…

I’m confused, when has “everything” been a bazaar, and when did that cease to be?

Umm, I missed a negation there, sorry. I meant that the newest generation has only seen a world where there's a giant OSS ecosystem and the bazaar style is the norm for all of your tool and library needs.

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#469

Post by coryrc » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

gedy wrote: post #426

progbits wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's every place :(

Re: Changing how we develop Ladybird

#470

Post by rustystump » Fri, Jun 05, 2026, 4:30 PM UTC

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’ll be blunt and say you certainly sounds like someone “post money” talking if castes and such. Glad you got your nut and do not care how it shakes out.

What is sad about oss? What is it turning into? I will say far before ai came in oss was a few arms deep in the techfluqncer culture where motivations were driven by gh stars and follow counts rather than a genuine interest. Or maybe what was a genuine interest became twisted as the culture changed.