| ▲ | MontyCarloHall 7 hours ago |
| Forget utterly groundbreaking things, I want to hear maintainers of complex, actively developed, and widely used open-source projects (e.g. ffmpeg, curl, openssh, sqlite) start touting a massive uptick in positive contributions, pointing to a concrete influx of high-quality AI-assisted commits. If AI is indeed a 10x force multiplier, shouldn't these projects have seen 10 years' worth of development in the last year? Don't get me wrong, AI is at least as game-changing for programming as StackOverflow and Google were back in the day. Being able to not only look up but automatically integrate things into your codebase that already exist in some form in the training data is incredibly useful. I use it every day, and it's saved me hours of work for certain specific tasks [0]. For tasks like that, it is indeed a 10x productivity multiplier. But since these tasks only comprise a small fraction of the full software development process, the rest of which cannot be so easily automated, AI is not the overall 10x force multiplier that some claim. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45511128 |
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| ▲ | simonw 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > I want to hear maintainers of complex, actively developed, and widely used open-source projects (e.g. ffmpeg, curl, openssh, sqlite) start touting a massive uptick in positive contributions That's obviously not going to happen, because AI tools can't solve for taste. Just because a developer can churn out working code with an LLM doesn't mean they have the skills to figure out what the right working code to contribute to a project is, and how to do so in a way that makes the maintainers lives easier and not harder. That skill will remain rare. (Also SQLite famously refuses to accept external contributions, but that's a different issue.) |
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| ▲ | SQLite 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, Simon, we don't "refuse". We are just very selective and there is a lot of paperwork involved to confirm the contribution is in the public domain and does not contaminate the SQLite core with licensed code. Please put the false narrative that "SQLite refuses outside contributions" to rest. The bar is high to get there, but the SQLite code base does contain contributed code. | | |
| ▲ | mtlynch 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Dr. Hipp, I love SQLite but also had simonw's misapprehension that the project did not accept contributions. The SQLite copyright page says: > Contributed Code > In order to keep SQLite completely free and unencumbered by copyright, the project does not accept patches. If you would like to suggest a change and you include a patch as a proof-of-concept, that would be great. However, please do not be offended if we rewrite your patch from scratch. I realize that the section, "Open-Source, not Open-Contribution" says that the project accepts contributions, but I'm having trouble understanding how that section and the "Contributed Code" section can both be accurate. Is there a distinction between accepting a "patch" vs. accepting a "contribution?" If you're planning to update this page to reduce confusion of the contribution policy, I humbly suggest a rewrite of this sentence to eliminate the single and double negatives, which make it harder to understand: > In order to keep SQLite in the public domain and ensure that the code does not become contaminated with proprietary or licensed content, the project does not accept patches from people who have not submitted an affidavit dedicating their contribution into the public domain. Could be rewritten as: > In order to keep SQLite in the public domain and prevent contamination of the code from proprietary or licensed content, the project only accepts patches from people who have submitted an affidavit dedicating their contribution into the public domain. [0] https://sqlite.org/copyright.html | | |
| ▲ | simonw 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, that "does not accept patches" line must have been where I picked up my incorrect mental model. |
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| ▲ | simonw 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks for the correction, and sorry for getting that wrong. I genuinely didn't know that. Found that paperwork here: https://www.sqlite.org/copyright-release.html I will make sure not to spread that misinformation further in the future! Update: I had a look in fossil and counted 38 contributors: brew install fossil
fossil clone https://www.sqlite.org/src sqlite.fossil
fossil sql -R sqlite.fossil "
SELECT user, COUNT(*) as commits
FROM event WHERE type='ci'
GROUP BY user ORDER BY commits DESC
"
Blogged about this (since it feels important to help spread the correction about this): https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/29/copyright-release/ |
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| ▲ | zwnow 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Being able to not only look up but automatically integrate things into your codebase that already exist in some form in the training data is incredibly useful. Until it decides to include code it gathered from a stackoverflow post 15 years ago probably introducing security related issues or makes up libraries on the go or even worse, tries to make u install libs that were part of a data poisoning attack. |
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| ▲ | MontyCarloHall 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's no different from supervising a naïve junior engineer who also copy/pastes from 15 year old SO posts (a tale as old as time): you need to carefully review and actually grok the code the junior/AI writes. Sometimes this ends up taking longer than writing it yourself, sometimes it doesn't. As with all decisions in delegating work, the trick is knowing ahead of time whether this will be the case. | | |
| ▲ | spzb 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Naive junior engineers eventually learn and become competent senior engineers. LLMs forget everything they "learn" as soon as the context window gets too big. | | |
| ▲ | MontyCarloHall 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Very true! I liken AI to having an endless supply of newly hired interns with near-infinite knowledge but intern-level skills. | |
| ▲ | cheevly 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There are like a dozen well-established ways to overcome this. Learn how to use the basic tools and patterns my dude. |
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| ▲ | zwnow 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I have yet to see a junior trying to install random/non existing libs. | | |
| ▲ | pigpop 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you forced them to try it from memory without giving them access to the web you sure would. |
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| ▲ | anthonypasq 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| the creator of claude code said on twitter he hasnt opened an ide in a month and merged 200 prs. |
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| ▲ | MontyCarloHall 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Might the creator of Claude Code have some … incentives … to develop like that, or at least claim that he does? As someone who frequently uses Claude Code, I cannot say that a year's worth of features/improvements have been added in the last month. It bears repeating: if AI is truly a 10x force multiplier, you should expect to see a ~year's worth of progress in a month. | | |
| ▲ | simonw 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Opus 4.5 is just a few days over a month old. Boris would have had access to that for a while before its release though. | | |
| ▲ | shimman 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Boris is someone that is employed by Anthropic and has a massive stake in them going public, standing to make millions. They are by definition a biased source and should not be referenced as such. | | |
| ▲ | simonw 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nobody here claimed that Boris wasn't a biased source. I do however think he is not an actively dishonest source. When he says "In the last thirty days, I landed 259 PRs -- 497 commits, 40k lines added, 38k lines removed. Every single line was written by Claude Code + Opus 4.5." I believe he is telling the truth. That's what dogfooding your own product looks like! https://twitter.com/bcherny/status/2004887829252317325 |
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| ▲ | spzb 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| curl in particular is being plagued by AI-slop security reports which are actively slowing development by forcing the maintainers to triage crap when they could be working on new features (or, you know, enjoying their lives) eg https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/15/curl_creator_mulls_ni... |
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