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Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

alexispurslane.github.io

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Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#491

Post by MichaelDickens »

logicprog wrote: post #433
xmddmx wrote: post #338

There's a meta-level of irony here that's important to note. TFA is defending the use of AI, and it very clearly (to me) used AI to analyze the data and present the results. In doing so, the author used statistics in a way they do not appear to understand, and ended up making numerous false claims (you can see the thread discussing these here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417626 ) In short, the study doesn't…

The statistical methodology I used is mine. As is the interpretation. Completely. To the degree that I misunderstood statistics (and it is under debate even in the thread you link, and the people accusing me of misunderstanding statistics there are universally misrepresenting my point, which is to point out a total absence of evidence for any difference, not to prove the null hypothesis) that's on me

FWIW I understood your point just fine. It seemed to me that you made a clear enough distinction between "evidence that Claude didn't increase bugs" and "no good evidence either way".

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#492

Post by mgfist »

wolletd wrote: post #454
rsc wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long-time open-source maintainer, I find all the second-guessing and armchair psychoanalysis here (not just in this comment, all over HN) about Tridge's motivations, state of mind, and so on incredibly off-putting. Tridge doesn't owe anyone anything as far as rsync is concerned. Yet he is spending his time maintaining it, only to be attacked for his efforts. To respond to the specific technical point, there real…

> Yet he is spending his time maintaining it, only to be attacked for his efforts. Which, in general, is totally legit. Doing something voluntarily doesn't relieve you from criticism if what you are doing isn't good.

You can criticize all you want, but he can also just stop maintaining it if he gets too annoyed by the criticism. Maybe that's a better outcome for you, idk.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#493

Post by mgfist »

Eufrat wrote: post #408
tpm wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Selling a toaster has an implicit warranty of merchantability. Why would you think this is worth mentioning here? Instead of explaining, just try to do something, that people actually use, for free, in the open, for some time. It doesn't have to be software, can be work for a nonprofit or a charity etc. I'm sure you will be enlightened.

I volunteer and I don't tell people or believe they should be grateful that an event is happening because of the volunteers. I just don't find this logic compelling in the same way that you don't find my logic compelling either.

That's not the argument. No one is asking users to be grateful for OSS. They just want users to not be dicks to the maintainer.

Would you continue volunteering if the beneficiaries spat in your face and cursed you out for it?

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#494

Post by bsza »

logicprog wrote: post #439
bsza wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Claude, it still makes zero sense as a metric. A commit is a measure of nothing. Severity weighted bugs per unit of nothing? What does that even mean? In any repo it's trivial to achieve a sev/10c that's arbitrarily close to zero while completely ruining everything. I suggest you practice some humility and update your conclusion instead of updating the mental gymnastics you used to arrive at the same conclusion.

Whether commits decrease the sev/10c depends on if there are a lot of small commits increasing the demoninator. In reality, we have the opposite: the post-Claude releases have way fewer commits than the pre-Claude ones. Thus, if anything their sev/10c is inflated . If I changed it to lines of code changed, the relative bug ratios would be much smaller, and the conclusion wouldn't change. In fact, the conclusion would…

> In reality, we have the opposite: the post-Claude releases have way fewer commits than the pre-Claude ones.

No, they don't, you just made that up.

> What different metric would you suggest that would change the conclusion?

What would be a lot more useful to know is whether or not the original prompt used to generate this post instructed you to do a fair and unbiased review of these bugs, and whether or not that prompt itself was framed in a fair and unbiased way. If you take a piece of paper and write "therefore Claude is not at fault" at the bottom, then nothing you write above that line is admissible, no matter how well-reasoned.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#495

Post by mexicocitinluez »

Aurornis wrote: post #135
matheusmoreira wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re just going to make people disable Claude attribution on their commits to avoid drama. People should be doing this regardless of drama. No reason to provide free advertising for trillion dollar corporations. Generated-by trailers are only relevant when contributing to third party projects, in that case disclosure is polite.

The value of the Claude attribution is that you can tell at a glance who used AI. I don't care about the advertising angle. We all know Claude by now. I want some indicator that AI was used.

If it's decent code, but attributed to AI, how does that change things? What real-world impacts does that have?

That's what I can't for the life of me figure out. Bad code is bad code regardless of who is writing it. Adding a disclaimer about how it was written is meaningless. Hell, it could say "Written by the Easter bunny" and that would have 0 impact on it's utility.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#496

Post by aseipp »

wolletd wrote: post #453
kelnos wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're willing to step up and be that person, it's not your place for you to suggest it.

I don't agree with that, I can very well still discuss that. He clearly sounds like someone who doesn't want to do this work anymore and should have searched for a successor. That's my impression from that sentence, at least. Don't you agree? So, why didn't he do it? Because just firing up Claude and let it rip is way easier than finding real people and building up trust? Did Claude increase bugs in rsync? Or did Cla…

> That's my impression from that sentence, at least. Don't you agree?

No. Given a choice between doing laundry and driving Lamborghinis, I would probably choose the latter. But I still have to do my laundry. I might use a washing machine to do so. It's just a responsibility among many responsibilities. It isn't that deep, really.

The reality few people want to admit is that maintaining open-source software is often closer for many people to "doing laundry" than like, being the software equivalent of Atticus Finch.

> Or did Claude just gave some basically retired programmer, who doesn't even want to work on his project anymore,

The only thing Claude has "done" apparently is give a bunch of annoying people online a license to engage in armchair psychoanalysis of someone they don't know at all, from what I can tell.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#497

Post by lemonad »

Eufrat wrote: post #397
tptacek wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No there isn't.

I just cannot understand this logic, can you explain why there is no responsibility whatsoever on the part of a maintainer towards the users? Selling a toaster has an implicit warranty of merchantability. Society expects that if you sell me something, it should have certain promises. Yes, there’s no monetary exchange here, the work is given gratis, but there’s still a relationship and an interaction here and I think…

Some people do not realize that they're in a parasocial relationships with content creators like streamers and youtubers and feel that it is reasonable to have expectations. For me, applying your argument, that there is some responsibility for a creator towards their users, within that domain seems farfetched. Like, I can wish that they'd continue producing worthwhile content but apart from that, how would their responsibility toward me actually manifest itself?

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#498

Post by duskdozer »

prmoustache wrote: post #470
wolletd wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with that, I can very well still discuss that. He clearly sounds like someone who doesn't want to do this work anymore and should have searched for a successor. That's my impression from that sentence, at least. Don't you agree? So, why didn't he do it? Because just firing up Claude and let it rip is way easier than finding real people and building up trust? Did Claude increase bugs in rsync? Or did Cla…

> and should have searched for a successor. He doesn't have to do that. If he ever do not care enough he can just stop maintaining it and that's it.

I think many would prefer that to the situation that happened.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#499

Post by amluto »

j16sdiz wrote: post #421
amluto wrote: post #303

Reposting my previous comment because the post I commented on earlier was flagged to death: This is kind of a sad situation. Tridge is an excellect programmer and a very respected member of the community, and I totally get it. rsync, like most old C projects, has a lot of accumulated cruft, and things that would be nice to fix, and bugs. And those bugs come in at least three classes: semantic bugs, improper interacti…

Tips: In HN, You need blank line (i.e. Hit ENTER twice) to start a new paragraph. -- Everything jams into an incomprehensible wall of text if you use one new line.

Ugh. The source comment, which this was literally a copy and paste of, had newlines. I wish HN could roundtrip from itself via the clipboard correctly.

Re: Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?

#500

Post by ch_fr »

This article is a rant disguised as data analysis.

I don't know how to word this in a non-confrontational, respectful way, but this article just feels like ammo for your next "debate with your anti-AI ennemies" where you get to say "look, I proved with data that those people had a disproportionate reaction and have double standards, therefore anyone who dislikes LLMs or their impact are the same!". Like, sorry, I know that sounds really reductive, but this really is the vibe I get when reading this and your other replies where you repeatedly talk about "showing the hypocrisy and double standards".

The global LLM discourse has grown massive, it spans trillions of dollars in promises and investments and affects pretty much everyone, so it's the easiest thing in the world for both sides to just find some people being assholes in the other camp and say "look, here's how [other camp] behaves".

The irrational, extreme, and heinous reactions are partly bandwagoning, and you can go about your day thinking that anyone who reacts like that is evil. But if you wanna dig a bit further, you'll notice that the entire media sphere has been screaming in everyone's ears for a few years now, that they're expandable, low-value-human-capital. All the money in the world (exaggerating a little) is being spent on making sure to remind anyone who opens a computer, opens a website, looks at a billboard, or turns on his tv... that their boss really really really wants to replace them.

Now you'll say that the friendly rsync contributor has nothing to do with any of this and... well yeah he doesn't. You don't need to agree with an emotional response to understand where it's coming from, and even if you're still dead set on considering them "the enemy", then understanding why the anti-AI crowd reacts like that is STILL a positive for you.

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