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Stop Slopware

stopslopware.net

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Re: Stop Slopware

#21

Post by simonw »

happytoexplain wrote: post #15
simonw wrote: post #6

> if you’re doing this for your own learning: you will learn better without AI . I'm certain that's not true. AI is the single biggest gift we could possible give to people who are learning to program - it's shaved that learning curve down to a point where you don't need to carve out six months of your life just to get to a point where you can build something small and useful that works. AI only hurts learning if you…

I think it's a pretty small generosity to implicitly extend what the author is saying to "you will learn better without generating your code". I don't know if that's what they meant, but AI is certainly a good tool for learning how things work and seeing examples (if you don't blindly trust everything it says and use other sources too).

That's fair. I also just noticed that the sentence before the bit I quoted is important:

> AI overuse hurts you:

> - if you’re doing this for your own learning: you will learn better without AI.

So they're calling out "AI overuse", and I agree with that - that's where the skill comes in of deciding how to use AI to help your learning in a way that doesn't damage that learning process.

Re: Stop Slopware

#22

Post by colesantiago »

fschuett wrote: post #17

[flagged]

Most of these people are either:

Students

Activists

Hyper opinionated and “principled” engineers (that won’t touch AI)

University professors

Engineers working with Linux and Free software who hate AI.

They all secretly use ChatGPT when it launched and still do.

Re: Stop Slopware

#23

Post by raincole »

simonw wrote: post #6

> if you’re doing this for your own learning: you will learn better without AI . I'm certain that's not true. AI is the single biggest gift we could possible give to people who are learning to program - it's shaved that learning curve down to a point where you don't need to carve out six months of your life just to get to a point where you can build something small and useful that works. AI only hurts learning if you…

I think the parallel is photobashing. I've seen art teachers debating how early a student should start photobashing. Everyone knows it's a widely adopted technique in the industry, but some consider it harmful for beginners.

Needlessly to say there is no consensus. I err on the side of photobashing personally.

Re: Stop Slopware

#28

Post by codr7 »

simonw wrote: post #6

> if you’re doing this for your own learning: you will learn better without AI . I'm certain that's not true. AI is the single biggest gift we could possible give to people who are learning to program - it's shaved that learning curve down to a point where you don't need to carve out six months of your life just to get to a point where you can build something small and useful that works. AI only hurts learning if you…

A robot TA that gives the wrong answer 50% of the time isn't very helpful.

Re: Stop Slopware

#29

Post by mpalmer »

You can't be serious.

> When you publish something under the banner of open–source, you implicitly enter a stewardship role. You’re not just shipping files, you’re making a contribution to a shared commons. That carries certain responsibilities: clarity about purpose, honesty about limitations, and a basic alignment with the community’s collaborative ethos.

(from the second link)

You're not just writing angry screeds, you are producing slop prose and asking us to spend our time reading it.

How is this not an implicit repudiation of your entire argument? Are you not hurting yourself by avoiding learning how to write better?

Re: Stop Slopware

#30

Post by magnitudes »

I find these really are not only condescending but also really miss the mark and ironically come off as really uneducated in my opinion, and that really is the most infuriating type of condescension. What you call slopware today is becoming less and less sloppy every six months as new coding models drop. In 2 years the “unmaintainable mess” is going to be far better and far more maintainable than anything the engineers behind these snide websites will make. Do folks realize you can also use the same coding models to ask questions and reason about the “slop” that these code models are writing that somehow is able to do something I would never have been able to do before? I don’t really care if it’s 100% accurate, hit it with a hammer until everything makes sense. Yell at Claude and learn how to wrangle it to get what you want, that skill is an investment that’s going to pay you back far more than following the advice of these folks, that’s my opinion.

Like “you will learn better without AI” is just a bad short sighted opinion dressed up in condescension to appear wise and authoritative.

Learn your tools, learn the limitations, understand where this is going, do the things you want to do and then realize “hey my opinions don’t have to be condescendingly preached to other people as though they are facts”

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