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Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

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Re: Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

#21

Post by themafia »

freakynit wrote: post #2

[flagged]

People are saying they detect a lot of "hate" in these comments which I don't see or agree with at all. People clearly have negative opinions about this and they're expressing them rather openly but to confuse this with actual "personal hate" seems like an equally overcharged response.

When you do anything publicly, even something that's considered a 'public good' like contributing to open source, you are opening yourself to the full tide of humanity for better or for worse. The overwhelming majority of the time it's for the better, occasionally, and in response to unpopular decisions, it's for worse.

What you shouldn't do is take any of this personally. It's open source. You have permission to take a break, you have permission to directly ignore issues and users, you have permission to do whatever makes _you_ happy.

If your goal is to receive unremitting love and adoration from a crowd of strangers then you're going to be bitterly disappointed... no matter how you occupy yourself.

Re: Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

#23

Post by abuob »

shimman wrote: post #11
scared_together wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I look at the commits themselves, most of the ones generated by Claude are testsuite changes, or at least labelled as such. https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/commits/master/

Is that suppose to make this better? IME the most valuable tests are those that test specific regressions. It's the scaffolding we build for ourselves to enable feature development. Remove that scaffolding and you get accidents. Pray to your god of choice these accidents don't cause harm or loss of life. It should really be considered negligence at this point. Some of this software is extremely valuable, it's how we…

In my perspective, "Analyze code, come up with edge cases and gaps and create unit tests for them" is one of the use-cases where AI was starting to get really good at, so I can see why someone would want to extend their test-suite dramatically using it.

But yes, using AI to then generate code that still causes regressions doesn't quite square with that. Given the huge amount of test-changes I'd still assume good faith by the maintainer; possibly just a bit of overexcitement paired with a dash of too much confidence into the new tools that is now hitting reality.

Re: Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

#24

Post by xiphias2 »

roenxi wrote: post #16
theonemind wrote: post #14

I find the way that issue was opened incredible obnoxious, but it is baffling that the maintainers seem to have let AI loose on rsync. Like, why? Why try comparatively experimental crap when your fortune and reputation is made and you're the leader of a niche and immune to market pressure and the people love the thing and it does exactly what it's supposed to and works well? It's like the Matrix, with the little rant…

Are you basing this opinion on the issue or actual evidence? Because this github link, although interesting, is almost completely context free on what the drama is beyond "Claude". The rsync maintainers could be anywhere on the spectrum from the perfect and responsible maintainer to incompetent children and we couldn't really tell.

The problem is the we couldn’t really tell part. Changes made to mature finished projects should be minimal and readable and understandable by humans.

Also rsync is handling copying binary data, it’s a project that’s super sensitive to hardware faults for example, which means it’s not just enough for the tests to pass.

Re: Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

#25

Post by bulbar »

roenxi wrote: post #16
theonemind wrote: post #14

I find the way that issue was opened incredible obnoxious, but it is baffling that the maintainers seem to have let AI loose on rsync. Like, why? Why try comparatively experimental crap when your fortune and reputation is made and you're the leader of a niche and immune to market pressure and the people love the thing and it does exactly what it's supposed to and works well? It's like the Matrix, with the little rant…

Are you basing this opinion on the issue or actual evidence? Because this github link, although interesting, is almost completely context free on what the drama is beyond "Claude". The rsync maintainers could be anywhere on the spectrum from the perfect and responsible maintainer to incompetent children and we couldn't really tell.

To me it seems people had actual problems with newer versions. Additionally, a significant portion of the code changed within a very short time frame.

Doesn't matter if they did it by hand or with AI.

Re: Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

#26

Post by rakel_rakel »

theonemind wrote: post #14

I find the way that issue was opened incredible obnoxious, but it is baffling that the maintainers seem to have let AI loose on rsync. Like, why? Why try comparatively experimental crap when your fortune and reputation is made and you're the leader of a niche and immune to market pressure and the people love the thing and it does exactly what it's supposed to and works well? It's like the Matrix, with the little rant…

I agree about letting AI loose on rsync is baffling, and also that how the issue was filed was incredible obnoxious. A thought crossed my mind though, with the risk of going slightly off topic. Disregarding the fact that mature software like Rsync does not need this kind of movement in changed LOC. Also assuming the maintainers best intentions with how they manage the project:

Since this is happening in open source, what do you think about the state of the quality of closed source software? AI usage (input as a success metric) is part of what you're being evaluated on as an employee, and people are panicking at the threat of mass layoffs due to AI.

Yikes!

Re: Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

#27

Post by bathtub365 »

bfkwlfkjf wrote: post #20
dnnddidiej wrote: post #5

[flagged]

If I were a user, knowing that the maintainers just let Claude lose on rsync would be bad for my stress levels. In any case, I hate rsync owing to how easy it is to accidentally deleting everything. From my pov I don't care if it disappears.

Then I have bad news for you about a large chunk of both open and closed source development today.

We also don’t know if it was “unleashed”. Claude will add a co-author line to your commit even if you just ask it to author or touch up your commit message or clean up your branch’s commit history or any of a number of things that result in the creation of a commit, even if it touched none of the code. This functionality actually saves me a ton of time and results in higher quality commit structure and messages.

Has this specific issue actually been tied to misuse of Claude?

Re: Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

#28

Post by jochem9 »

This is the third HN post I read on this topic. Everytime the same tweet (or whatever it's called for mastodon/bluesky/etc). Did anyone actually debug the issue?

Was it caused by poorly generated code, or was it caused a genuine (security) fix that accidentally caused it (potentially even in a way a human would to)?

Re: Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software

#29

Post by seba_dos1 »

bulbar wrote: post #25
roenxi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you basing this opinion on the issue or actual evidence? Because this github link, although interesting, is almost completely context free on what the drama is beyond "Claude". The rsync maintainers could be anywhere on the spectrum from the perfect and responsible maintainer to incompetent children and we couldn't really tell.

To me it seems people had actual problems with newer versions. Additionally, a significant portion of the code changed within a very short time frame. Doesn't matter if they did it by hand or with AI.

I just had the first case of a file not being copied correctly after using rsync that I noticed a few days ago. It was a raw image file so it was visually noticeable, some lines of pixels just went black. It may be unrelated, it may not have even been rsync's fault, but this drama and timing just makes me wonder if I got clauded there.
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