6 ms·

Then where are all the amazing open source programs written by individuals by themselves? Where are all the small businesses supposedly assisted by AI?

by amrocha 7mo ago

Herring 7mo ago
> 4% of GitHub public commits are being authored by Claude Code right now. At the current trajectory, we believe that Claude Code will be 20%+ of all daily commits by the end of 2026. https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/claude-code-is-the-inflection-point https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/claude-code-is-the-inf...
- amrocha 7mo ago
  There’s lots of slop out there, that doesn’t mean it’s actually good or useful code.
  - simonw 7mo ago
    Keep moving those goal posts.
    - amrocha 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      - DiggyJohnson 7mo ago
        You could have easily made the same point and just not included the last sentence. Guidelines an all that
        entrox 7mo ago
        I feel different: the last line is very important in this context, since it communicates the underlying thoughts and values of the poster. Asking for "amazing" open source projects in this case is not asking out of genuine curiosity or want for debate, it is a rhetorical question asked out of frustration at the general trajectory of AI and who profits off of it -- namely the boot-wearers.
      - simonw 7mo ago
        Here are a few of mine from the past month - for all of them 90%+ of the code written by Claude Code: - https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json - https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-ast https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-ast - https://github.com/simonw/showboat https://github.com/simonw/showboat - 292 stars - https://github.com/simonw/datasette-showboat https://github.com/simonw/datasette-showboat - https://github.com/simonw/rodney https://github.com/simonw/rodney - 290 stars and 4 contributors who aren't me or Claude - https://github.com/simonw/chartroom https://github.com/simonw/chartroom Noting the star counts here because they are a very loose indication that someone other than me has found them useful.
        LunaSea 7mo ago
        I quickly read through the `sqlite-history-json` project and it's only a few hundred lines of code and the code doesn't use transactions which means that it can fail and leave the state of the code and database in an inconsistent state.
        simonw 7mo ago
        Being only a few hundred lines of code is a pro, not a con (it's 2,800 including tests: https://tools.simonwillison.net/sloccount?repo=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fsimonw%2Fsqlite-history-json https://tools.simonwillison.net/sloccount?repo=https%3A%2F%2... - lines counted by my vibe-coded port of the classic Perl SLOCCount tool to run in a browser using Perl-in-WebAssembly.) It does use transactions in the form of savepoints which means they can be nested: https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json/blob/53e66b2791a1ccc2efd19c1e24de9fd5afcc343b/sqlite_history_json/core.py#L18 https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json/blob/53e66b279... Transactions are tested here: https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json/blob/53e66b2791a1ccc2efd19c1e24de9fd5afcc343b/tests/test_sqlite_history_json.py#L464 https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json/blob/53e66b279... I lead with sqlite-history-json because I think it's the most impressive of the bunch - it solves a difficult problem in an elegant way with code I would have been proud to write by hand.
        amrocha 7mo ago
        Props for your work on these but they’re toys mate. These are things you built for yourself that other people happened to find useful. That’s great! I’m not shitting on that, but it doesn’t really convince me that AI coding really is this amazing productivity booster in all cases. It’s good for small greenfield projects, I’ll admit that.
    - techpression 7mo ago
      They didn’t, amazing open source was asked for, meaningless stats were given. Not that GitHub public repositories were amazing before AI, but nothing has changed since, except AI slop being a new category.
    - jdlshore 7mo ago
      Doesn’t look like goal-post moving to me. GP argued that AI isn’t making a difference, because if it was, we’d see amazing AI-generated open source projects. (Edit: taking a second look, that’s not exactly what GP said, but that’s what I took away from it. Obviously individuals create open source projects all the time.) You rebutted by claiming 4% of open source contributions are AI generated. GP countered (somewhat indirectly) by arguing that contributions don’t indicate quality, and thus wasn’t sufficient to qualify as “amazing AI-generated open source projects.” Personally, I agree. The presence of AI contributions is not sufficient to demonstrate “amazing AI-generated open-source projects.” To demonstrate that, you’d need to point to specific projects that were largely generated by AI. The only big AI-generated projects I’ve heard of are Steve Yegge’s GasTown and Beads, and by all accounts those are complete slop, to the point that Beads has a community dedicated to teaching people how to uninstall it. (Just hearsay. I haven’t looked into them myself.) So at this point, I’d say the burden of proof is on you, as the original goalposts have not been met. Edit: Or, at least, I don’t think 4% is enough to demonstrate the level of productivity GP was asking for.
      - beart 7mo ago
        It has been argued for a very long time, lines of code is largely meaningless as a metric. But now that AI is writing those lines... it seems to be meaningful again? I continue to be optimistically skeptical.
      - famouswaffles 7mo ago
        It's not a great ask. Who's going to quantify what is 'amazing open source work'? 4% for a single tool used in a particular way (many are out there using AI tools in a way that doesn't make it clear the code was AI authored) is an incredible amount. Don't see how you can look at that and see 'not enough'. The vast majority of people using these tools aren't announcing it to the world. Why would they ? They use it, it works and that's that.
        sensanaty 7mo ago
        So we're suddenly going back into measuring lines of code as a useful metric? Just because people are shitting out endless slop code that they never bothered to throw a 2nd glance at doesn't mean it'sgood or that it's leading to better projects or tools, it literally just means people are pushing code out haphazardly . If I made a python script that everyone started using and all it did was create a repo, commit a README and push it every 5 seconds we'd be seeing billions of lines of code added! But none of it is useful in any way. Same with AI, sure we're generating endless piles of code, but how much of it is actually leading to better software?
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - thesmtsolver2 7mo ago
      > where are all the amazing open source programs > amazing Nobody moved the goal posts.
    - LadyCailin 7mo ago
      Even if this was goalpost moving, is it really an unreasonable ask to not have slop everywhere?
    - keybored 7mo ago
      Keep evangelizing on behalf of tech billionaires.
- simiones 7mo ago
  > Honestly, AI slop PRs are becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for #Godot maintainers. > If you want to help, more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop (on top of everything we do already) is the only viable solution I can think of https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/open-source-game-engine-godot-is-drowning-in-ai-slop-code-contributions-i-dont-know-how-long-we-can-keep-it-up/ https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/open-source-game-...
  - lelanthran 7mo ago
    > If you want to help, more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop (on top of everything we do already) is the only viable solution I can think of This is exactly the wrong approach! Funnel even more money away from productive tasks and into AI? Madness![1] The only viable solution is being quick with a banhammer - maybe someone should start up a spamhaus type list of every github user who submitted AI slop. Force them to burn these accounts on the very first spam. ------------ [1] Imagine if we chose this approach to deal with spam - we ask people for more money to hire a warm body to individually verify each email. Do you think spam would be the solved problem it is today?
com2kid 7mo ago
Seemingly every day on Show HN? Also small businesses aren't going to publish blog posts saying "we saved $500 on graphic design this week!"
- amrocha 7mo ago
  Is saving 500$ by generating some shitty AI art the bar? I thought this supposed to replace entire departments
  - afavour 7mo ago
    Someone asked “where are all the small businesses”, this was a reply to that. Small businesses don’t have entire art departments.
    - amrocha 7mo ago
      Gotcha, so the impact of AI is small businesses get to save a couple hundred dollars and the cost is only 2% of your countries GDP. That’s good.
      - com2kid 7mo ago
        Prior to industrialization if you wanted to paint something you had to know how to mix your own paints. And make your own brushes. Before the printing presses came along, putting up flyers was not even imaginable. Signs for businesses used to hand carved. Then printed. A store sign was still produced by a team of professionals, but small businesses coils reasonably afford to print a sign. Not often updated, but it existed. Then desktop publishing took off. Now lone graphic designers could design and send work off to a print shop. Small businesses could now afford regularly updated menus, signage, and even adverts and flyers. Now small businesses can make their own creatives. AI can change stylesheets, write ad copy, and generate promotional photos. Does any of this have the artistry of hand carved signs from 600 years ago? Of course not. But the point is technology gives individuals control.

Then where are all the amazing open source programs written by individuals by themselves? Where are all the small businesses supposedly assisted by AI?

by amrocha 7mo ago

Then where are all the amazing open source programs written by individuals by themselves? Where are all the small businesses supposedly assisted by AI?

Herring 7mo ago

> 4% of GitHub public commits are being authored by Claude Code right now. At the current trajectory, we believe that Claude Code will be 20%+ of all daily commits by the end of 2026. https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/claude-code-is-the-inflection-point https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/claude-code-is-the-inf...

amrocha 7mo ago
There’s lots of slop out there, that doesn’t mean it’s actually good or useful code.
- simonw 7mo ago
  Keep moving those goal posts.
  - amrocha 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - DiggyJohnson 7mo ago
      You could have easily made the same point and just not included the last sentence. Guidelines an all that
      - entrox 7mo ago
        I feel different: the last line is very important in this context, since it communicates the underlying thoughts and values of the poster. Asking for "amazing" open source projects in this case is not asking out of genuine curiosity or want for debate, it is a rhetorical question asked out of frustration at the general trajectory of AI and who profits off of it -- namely the boot-wearers.
    - simonw 7mo ago
      Here are a few of mine from the past month - for all of them 90%+ of the code written by Claude Code: - https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json - https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-ast https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-ast - https://github.com/simonw/showboat https://github.com/simonw/showboat - 292 stars - https://github.com/simonw/datasette-showboat https://github.com/simonw/datasette-showboat - https://github.com/simonw/rodney https://github.com/simonw/rodney - 290 stars and 4 contributors who aren't me or Claude - https://github.com/simonw/chartroom https://github.com/simonw/chartroom Noting the star counts here because they are a very loose indication that someone other than me has found them useful.
      - LunaSea 7mo ago
        I quickly read through the `sqlite-history-json` project and it's only a few hundred lines of code and the code doesn't use transactions which means that it can fail and leave the state of the code and database in an inconsistent state.
        simonw 7mo ago
        Being only a few hundred lines of code is a pro, not a con (it's 2,800 including tests: https://tools.simonwillison.net/sloccount?repo=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fsimonw%2Fsqlite-history-json https://tools.simonwillison.net/sloccount?repo=https%3A%2F%2... - lines counted by my vibe-coded port of the classic Perl SLOCCount tool to run in a browser using Perl-in-WebAssembly.) It does use transactions in the form of savepoints which means they can be nested: https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json/blob/53e66b2791a1ccc2efd19c1e24de9fd5afcc343b/sqlite_history_json/core.py#L18 https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json/blob/53e66b279... Transactions are tested here: https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json/blob/53e66b2791a1ccc2efd19c1e24de9fd5afcc343b/tests/test_sqlite_history_json.py#L464 https://github.com/simonw/sqlite-history-json/blob/53e66b279... I lead with sqlite-history-json because I think it's the most impressive of the bunch - it solves a difficult problem in an elegant way with code I would have been proud to write by hand.
      - amrocha 7mo ago
        Props for your work on these but they’re toys mate. These are things you built for yourself that other people happened to find useful. That’s great! I’m not shitting on that, but it doesn’t really convince me that AI coding really is this amazing productivity booster in all cases. It’s good for small greenfield projects, I’ll admit that.
  - techpression 7mo ago
    They didn’t, amazing open source was asked for, meaningless stats were given. Not that GitHub public repositories were amazing before AI, but nothing has changed since, except AI slop being a new category.
  - jdlshore 7mo ago
    Doesn’t look like goal-post moving to me. GP argued that AI isn’t making a difference, because if it was, we’d see amazing AI-generated open source projects. (Edit: taking a second look, that’s not exactly what GP said, but that’s what I took away from it. Obviously individuals create open source projects all the time.) You rebutted by claiming 4% of open source contributions are AI generated. GP countered (somewhat indirectly) by arguing that contributions don’t indicate quality, and thus wasn’t sufficient to qualify as “amazing AI-generated open source projects.” Personally, I agree. The presence of AI contributions is not sufficient to demonstrate “amazing AI-generated open-source projects.” To demonstrate that, you’d need to point to specific projects that were largely generated by AI. The only big AI-generated projects I’ve heard of are Steve Yegge’s GasTown and Beads, and by all accounts those are complete slop, to the point that Beads has a community dedicated to teaching people how to uninstall it. (Just hearsay. I haven’t looked into them myself.) So at this point, I’d say the burden of proof is on you, as the original goalposts have not been met. Edit: Or, at least, I don’t think 4% is enough to demonstrate the level of productivity GP was asking for.
    - beart 7mo ago
      It has been argued for a very long time, lines of code is largely meaningless as a metric. But now that AI is writing those lines... it seems to be meaningful again? I continue to be optimistically skeptical.
    - famouswaffles 7mo ago
      It's not a great ask. Who's going to quantify what is 'amazing open source work'? 4% for a single tool used in a particular way (many are out there using AI tools in a way that doesn't make it clear the code was AI authored) is an incredible amount. Don't see how you can look at that and see 'not enough'. The vast majority of people using these tools aren't announcing it to the world. Why would they ? They use it, it works and that's that.
      - sensanaty 7mo ago
        So we're suddenly going back into measuring lines of code as a useful metric? Just because people are shitting out endless slop code that they never bothered to throw a 2nd glance at doesn't mean it'sgood or that it's leading to better projects or tools, it literally just means people are pushing code out haphazardly . If I made a python script that everyone started using and all it did was create a repo, commit a README and push it every 5 seconds we'd be seeing billions of lines of code added! But none of it is useful in any way. Same with AI, sure we're generating endless piles of code, but how much of it is actually leading to better software?
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - thesmtsolver2 7mo ago
    > where are all the amazing open source programs > amazing Nobody moved the goal posts.
  - LadyCailin 7mo ago
    Even if this was goalpost moving, is it really an unreasonable ask to not have slop everywhere?
  - keybored 7mo ago
    Keep evangelizing on behalf of tech billionaires.
simiones 7mo ago
> Honestly, AI slop PRs are becoming increasingly draining and demoralizing for #Godot maintainers. > If you want to help, more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop (on top of everything we do already) is the only viable solution I can think of https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/open-source-game-engine-godot-is-drowning-in-ai-slop-code-contributions-i-dont-know-how-long-we-can-keep-it-up/ https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/open-source-game-...
- lelanthran 7mo ago
  > If you want to help, more funding so we can pay more maintainers to deal with the slop (on top of everything we do already) is the only viable solution I can think of This is exactly the wrong approach! Funnel even more money away from productive tasks and into AI? Madness![1] The only viable solution is being quick with a banhammer - maybe someone should start up a spamhaus type list of every github user who submitted AI slop. Force them to burn these accounts on the very first spam. ------------ [1] Imagine if we chose this approach to deal with spam - we ask people for more money to hire a warm body to individually verify each email. Do you think spam would be the solved problem it is today?

com2kid 7mo ago

Seemingly every day on Show HN? Also small businesses aren't going to publish blog posts saying "we saved $500 on graphic design this week!"

amrocha 7mo ago
Is saving 500$ by generating some shitty AI art the bar? I thought this supposed to replace entire departments
- afavour 7mo ago
  Someone asked “where are all the small businesses”, this was a reply to that. Small businesses don’t have entire art departments.
  - amrocha 7mo ago
    Gotcha, so the impact of AI is small businesses get to save a couple hundred dollars and the cost is only 2% of your countries GDP. That’s good.
    - com2kid 7mo ago
      Prior to industrialization if you wanted to paint something you had to know how to mix your own paints. And make your own brushes. Before the printing presses came along, putting up flyers was not even imaginable. Signs for businesses used to hand carved. Then printed. A store sign was still produced by a team of professionals, but small businesses coils reasonably afford to print a sign. Not often updated, but it existed. Then desktop publishing took off. Now lone graphic designers could design and send work off to a print shop. Small businesses could now afford regularly updated menus, signage, and even adverts and flyers. Now small businesses can make their own creatives. AI can change stylesheets, write ad copy, and generate promotional photos. Does any of this have the artistry of hand carved signs from 600 years ago? Of course not. But the point is technology gives individuals control.