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I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

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Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#181

Post by dreamcompiler »

kvark wrote: post #4

We had a process at one company where you had to create an issue before filing a PR. I found it most non-sensical and introducing friction for no good reason. Very surprised to see the author suggesting it in the article. Review is indeed the main bottleneck now for open source, and we need to solve it. Introducing more friction is hardly helping.

We had that process too, and I insisted on it. Any PR not matched to one or more issues gets automatically rejected. The friction this injects ensures people are not wasting company resources bikeshedding.

I'm a world champion bikeshedder, and I both hated this policy and insisted we keep it.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#182

Post by phyzome »

stantaylor wrote: post #6

Even if this guy were not anti-AI, as the primary maintainer of OS projects, it sounds like he's dealing with a genuine problem. > My initial task when a new unexpected PR arrives is to determine if there is a person behind it or not, and luckily this is easy to figure out in just a few seconds. OK. How? That would have been an interesting explanation to me.

You pretty quickly get a sense for it. But the author does also explicitly list a few indicators.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#183

Post by IggleSniggle »

slopinthebag wrote: post #108
seanlinehan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can reason by analogy here. In a pre-LLM world, a classic software team would have PMs, designers, and engineers. Of those three, the PM wouldn't have any real role in writing code. And they would rarely contribute a ton to the design. What they would be contributing is ideas, market insights, coordination, prioritization, etc. When the product ships, one would expect the PM to feel a real sense of accomplishment…

It's more akin to someone commissioning a piece of art, where they describe the piece in varying detail and then it's the responsibility of the artist to see it through, perhaps deciphering ambiguities in the p̴r̴o̴m̴p̴t̴ commission brief. If you want to stick with the PM analogy, it would be akin to the manager spending 30 minutes writing up a draft spec, passing it off to their employees and then spending the rest…

Some artists use a brush, but others use a chisel.

And then there's the bullshit artists.

Just because we never had the option of a chisel before doesn't mean all chiselers are bullshit artists.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#184

Post by phyzome »

weinzierl wrote: post #26

The article closes with the question: "Does open source matter anymore?" I wouldn’t pretend to have an answer. of course. Opens Source means, always meant, different things to different people. I know what always counted for me: 1. Copyleft License 2. No CLA or Copyright assignment 3. Diverse group of contributors I sympathize with Miguels point but it bothers me it clashes with point 3 in my list. If you hand select…

"Diversity" doesn't mean "zero thresholds for skill or respect".

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#185

Post by phyzome »

doginasuit wrote: post #77

It seems like there is a ready solution here, have an LLM review and filter pull requests from unknown sources before you read them. My understanding is there are semi-reliable ways to detect AI writing, maybe there is an analog for code. In any case, you can filter according to criteria you set. Analysis and bug-finding is where LLMs shine, much more than their ability to generate code. I can understand wanting to m…

"AI-detectors" are still probabilistic and none of them are exactly stellar. (No, even Pangram. It still screws up on the regular, very badly.) And some of that includes calling real people's writing "AI-generated", which isn't acceptable for this task.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#187

Post by WhitneyLand »

The PR quality problem is legit and needs a solution.

But saying his opinion hasn’t changed on this:

“the main and most important reason why GenAI tools do not work for me is that they do not make me any faster.”

It’s been a year and agents and models have improved dramatically.

I can see for some things it doesn’t make sense, but not using it at all because there’s nothing it can help with?

Devs who don’t use models at all are a dying breed and I think it won’t be long before he’ll be forced to concede the point.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#188

Post by slopinthebag »

seanlinehan wrote: post #151
slopinthebag wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more akin to someone commissioning a piece of art, where they describe the piece in varying detail and then it's the responsibility of the artist to see it through, perhaps deciphering ambiguities in the p̴r̴o̴m̴p̴t̴ commission brief. If you want to stick with the PM analogy, it would be akin to the manager spending 30 minutes writing up a draft spec, passing it off to their employees and then spending the rest…

I think that's fair for certain one-shot generations. For example, sending off a single prompt to an image or music generator and just accepting the output. But I think most of this stuff is iterative, multi-turn. You type a thing in, see what comes back, and then repeat until you have something that satisfies your desire. Taking the manager analogy. If you spent 30-minutes writing up a draft spec, waited for the out…

Taking the art commission approach, you go back and forth with the artist until you have what you want. Should you feel pride?

I think it's much closer to the art commission than it is to a manager who is managing humans, the constraints of the business, customers, etc.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#189

Post by TylerE »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #155
gedy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose those advocates have more faith in LLM output compared to humans than I do. Some of this is the funny situation where the faithful will state: "This writes better code than I do!" and miss the irony of: "yes, yes it does"

> "This writes better code than I do!" and miss the irony of: "yes, yes it does" I guess it depends on what you consider "better". I've tried using LLMs to write code over the past couple of weeks with extremely mixed results. The LLM certainly writes more interesting code! They like their cute ASCII/unicode animations, don't they? It definitely writes a lot more code, none of it actually correct but some of it funct…

> They like their cute ASCII/unicode animations, don't they?

One of the few global Cluade directives I have setup is to never use emojis - and it never has, either in chat output or in code. Don't blame the tool when you don't spend 30 seconds configuring it. It's even easier with AI since you don't have to go digging for some obscure .vimrc snippet - it's literally just plain English.

Re: I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

#190

Post by emodendroket »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #164
emodendroket wrote: post #158

> Does open source matter anymore? I mean, did it ever? It depends what you mean. Very few open source or free software projects are successful in any meaningful sense.

I feel like projects can be successful without being popular.

To me the "open source" model implies something about community development and people sharing or otherwise using it. Otherwise what does it matter if it's open or closed source?
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