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Potential issues in curl found using AI assisted tools

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Re: Potential issues in curl found using AI assisted tools

#191

Post by rkomorn »

gopalv wrote: post #189
ronsor wrote: post #183

To anyone who thinks about our current situation for than a few minutes, AI is * Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers and security researchers * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing But the latter group's incompetency does not make AI useless in the same way that a fighter jet is not useless because a toddler cannot pilot it.

> Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers > Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing > the same way that a fighter jet is not useless AI is currently like a bicycle, while we were all running hills before. There's a skill barrier and getting less complicated each week. The marketing goal is to say "Push the pedal and it goes!" like it was a car on a highway, but it is a bicy…

Solid metaphor. No notes.

Re: Potential issues in curl found using AI assisted tools

#192

Post by casenmgreen »

the_jeremy wrote: post #186
ronsor wrote: post #183

To anyone who thinks about our current situation for than a few minutes, AI is * Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers and security researchers * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing But the latter group's incompetency does not make AI useless in the same way that a fighter jet is not useless because a toddler cannot pilot it.

> * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing I disagree. I'm making a board game of 6 colors of hexes, and I wanted to be able to easily edit the board. The first time around, I used a screenshot of a bunch of hexagons and used paint to color them (tedious, ugly, not transparent, poor quality). This time, I asked ChatGPT to make an SVG of the board and then make a JS script so that clicking on a…

It seems to me then you then did not learn what you would otherwise have learned, and so did not improve receive the critical thinking and general halo of knowledge improvements which come with learning.

Re: Potential issues in curl found using AI assisted tools

#193

Post by arscan »

the_jeremy wrote: post #186
ronsor wrote: post #183

To anyone who thinks about our current situation for than a few minutes, AI is * Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers and security researchers * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing But the latter group's incompetency does not make AI useless in the same way that a fighter jet is not useless because a toddler cannot pilot it.

> * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing I disagree. I'm making a board game of 6 colors of hexes, and I wanted to be able to easily edit the board. The first time around, I used a screenshot of a bunch of hexagons and used paint to color them (tedious, ugly, not transparent, poor quality). This time, I asked ChatGPT to make an SVG of the board and then make a JS script so that clicking on a…

> but ChatGPT did it in 10min with some back and forth

You might be underestimating the expertise you applied in these 10 minutes. I know I often do.

> it's a toy example

This technology does exceptionally well on toy examples, I think because there are much fewer constraints on acceptable output than ‘real’ examples.

> you don't have to knwo what you're doing to get useful things from AI

You do need to know what is useful though, which can be a surprisingly high bar.

Re: Potential issues in curl found using AI assisted tools

#195

Post by [deleted] »

the_jeremy wrote: post #186
ronsor wrote: post #183

To anyone who thinks about our current situation for than a few minutes, AI is * Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers and security researchers * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing But the latter group's incompetency does not make AI useless in the same way that a fighter jet is not useless because a toddler cannot pilot it.

> * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing I disagree. I'm making a board game of 6 colors of hexes, and I wanted to be able to easily edit the board. The first time around, I used a screenshot of a bunch of hexagons and used paint to color them (tedious, ugly, not transparent, poor quality). This time, I asked ChatGPT to make an SVG of the board and then make a JS script so that clicking on a…

[deleted]

Re: Potential issues in curl found using AI assisted tools

#196

Post by darkwater »

ronsor wrote: post #183

To anyone who thinks about our current situation for than a few minutes, AI is * Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers and security researchers * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing But the latter group's incompetency does not make AI useless in the same way that a fighter jet is not useless because a toddler cannot pilot it.

This is currently true. There was a perfect approach of the other side of the coin with curl again a few weeks ago (https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/07/14/death-by-a-thousand-s...)

Re: Potential issues in curl found using AI assisted tools

#197

Post by belZaah »

gopalv wrote: post #189
ronsor wrote: post #183

To anyone who thinks about our current situation for than a few minutes, AI is * Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers and security researchers * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing But the latter group's incompetency does not make AI useless in the same way that a fighter jet is not useless because a toddler cannot pilot it.

> Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers > Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing > the same way that a fighter jet is not useless AI is currently like a bicycle, while we were all running hills before. There's a skill barrier and getting less complicated each week. The marketing goal is to say "Push the pedal and it goes!" like it was a car on a highway, but it is a bicy…

True, AI moves the problem somewhere else. But I’m not sure the new problems are actually easier to solve in the long run.

I’m a reasonable developer with 30+ years of experience. Recently I worked on an API design project and had to generate a mock implementation based on a full openapi spec. Exactly what Copilot would be good at. No amount of prompting could make it generate a fully functional spring-boot project doing both the mock api and present the spec at a url at the same time. Yet it did a very neat job at just the mock for a simpler version of the same api a few weeks prior. Go figure.

Re: Potential issues in curl found using AI assisted tools

#198

Post by 0points »

ranger_danger wrote: post #185
ronsor wrote: post #183

To anyone who thinks about our current situation for than a few minutes, AI is * Clearly useful to people who are already competent developers and security researchers * Utterly useless to people who have no clue what they're doing But the latter group's incompetency does not make AI useless in the same way that a fighter jet is not useless because a toddler cannot pilot it.

> “A good tool in the hands of a competent person is a powerful combination,” says Daniel Stenberg.

Daniel Stenberg has been vocal about AI generated patches in the past, and it's interesting to see him changing course here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38845878

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43907376

https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2025-3407-ai_slop_attacks_on_t...

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