| ▲ | Fraterkes 5 hours ago |
| I've been looking a lot at Godot (another big open source project) PRs lately, and there's been kind of a surge of wholy ai-generated PRs (both code and description).
This is agains project-policy, so people creating these PRs usually get mildly told off. What's surprising is that while many submitters take that fairly well, some people get really indignant, essentially calling the maintainers ungrateful. It's kinda surprising to me that even the people who are all in on ai haven't internalized that there's no inherent value in producing a big lump of code. They've massively decreased the work they put in but still expect the same pre-ai reaction/gratitude when submitting a big PR. |
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| ▲ | lucideer 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The pre-ai reaction was also unwarranted: committing a massive amount of potentially unmaintainable handwritten code isn't a necessarily positive contribution and any decent engineer (or person tbh) would understand that & not expect gratitude, no matter how concerted their effort. In that context, I wouldn't expect an idiot (of which there has always been far too many in this industry) to change their behaviour in a post-ai world. They were always out of line & continue to be. Fwiw, a non-technical employee in my workplace has begun submitting ai-generated prs to internal repos I maintain & they're of excellent quality, with review feedback graciously received & expediently addressed, so this isn't a matter of the idiots not being technical, it's an attitude problem. |
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| ▲ | DrewADesign 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure, but I think we should judiciously avoid the false equivalence yielded by only looking at this on a developer-by-developer basis, rather than systemically. The truth is that in practice, AI is not a neutral force. Obviously AI can enhance the output of smart, experienced developers and improve the efficiency of code reviews, mitigating the effects of garbage PRs. However, it increases the percentage of PRs contributed by entirely inexperienced and/or not-smart devs from zero to, potentially, the majority. It entirely removes the barriers inherent to coding that kept Dunning-Krueger cases from submitting ill-conceived or poorly constructed changes— actually getting them to run in some way, even poorly. That makes them much more difficult to distinguish from well-constructed PRs than those from, say, someone cargo-culting code from tutorials. Moreover, as these tools become more expensive, people with money to blow on tokens will be able to drown maintainers that don’t have enough token-cash to help them deal with it. People see this as mostly a matter of time and energy, but I reckon it will soon be a financial issue. | | |
| ▲ | abirch 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I see AI as a barrier remover. Unfortunately some barriers are good or minimally necessary. I think we'll need to revert to artificial barriers such as bonds, e.g., if you want to do a PR to my repository you need to pay a 10 dollar bond. If the PR is good and I want future PRs, you keep your bond. If it's slop and spam, I get 10 dollars for my time. | | |
| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is entirely too much friction in the wrong place. Public open source will simply die before a system like that ever becomes the norm. The previous barriers worked because they were organically perfectly in line with a contributor's internal incentives. A contributor gains very little benefit from submitting a patch; the likelihood is infinitesimally small they'll ever get any career advancement, financial recompense, or even much community recognition for it. At most, it shifts the burden of maintaining the code they're contributing from themselves to the community / long-term maintainers. The real incentive for a contributor was making the patch, because they get to see the feature or fix they want made for the software. The previous barriers were in making the patch, and contributors would overcome that friction to gain the benefit of having the patch they want. Moving the barrier to merely submitting the patch after it has already been made will simply result in people not bothering, because there is very little incentivizing them to deal with the friction. | | |
| ▲ | abirch 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't disagree, where is the right place for the friction? |
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| ▲ | leoc 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A couple of alternatives are: 1) more reliance on systems to track reputation across projects. I'm sure Microsoft, in the form of GitHub, will love to sell you a partial fix to the same problems it so enthusiastically helped to create. But there are the familiar problems of surveillance, identity theft, office politics, and system-gaming, and it doesn't on its own offer an onramp for new players. 2) in-person coding tests at the same Pearson test centres where people take most of their Cisco (and accounting, and ...) exams today. Not as expensive or inconvenient as you might think, but not the cheapest and easiest, and it certainly has the same concerns re. surveillance and identity theft | |
| ▲ | DrewADesign 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I agree with the bond in theory, but that would entirely stop contributions from people in economies where a shady maintainer could keep their code, and their weekly food budget. | |
| ▲ | voidmain0001 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or create pull requests and earn crypto! https://gitearn.vercel.app/ https://gitreward.com/ | |
| ▲ | Forgeties79 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We already have trouble with people maintaining open source projects without getting paid, now you want people to pay for the privilege to participate in free work? | | |
| ▲ | abirch 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's a bond not a fee. If the maintainer feels that it's spam, they keep the bond. If they feel like it's not, they leave it. | | |
| ▲ | Forgeties79 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That sounds like a massive headache for maintainers and opportunity for people to cry foul. That gets messy so fast. |
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| ▲ | Klonoar 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Fwiw, a non-technical employee in my workplace has begun submitting ai-generated prs to internal repos I maintain & they're of excellent quality, with review feedback graciously received & expediently addressed, so this isn't a matter of the idiots not being technical, it's an attitude problem. It is hard for me to imagine another engineering discipline that would be totally fine accepting work from those who don't have the actual engineering background required to do the work. If I had to push this take to the extreme: software engineers never learned class solidarity and it's now biting the industry in the ass. | | |
| ▲ | dcrazy 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Man, you must hate those handymen who put up YouTube videos showing how to do basic home maintenance. A truly class-conscious handyman would insist that the homeowner hire them to replace a light switch. |
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| ▲ | Fraterkes 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Gratitude was maybe the wrong word. As the article mentions, before ai I think larger PRs, while sometimes inconsiderate, at least implied some amount of care / effort / good faith. In my experience, that was often rewarded with the maintainers at least taking a look at the code. I meant it's odd to have the same expectation when you dump 3000 lines in a pr that you won't even personally write a description for. |
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| ▲ | torben-friis 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is certainly a certain... entitlement? (It's not the perfect word, but I fail to find a proper term) from some of the vibe crowd. Like an attachment to the output and refusal to accept that most of the work was not theirs. It is seen in the way they approach contributions but also in regular language. I created X, insistence that their 'curation' was very influencial to the output, difficulty to mention LLM contribution, attitude of 'I care about building while others lose time in details', refusal to engage with potential flaws, and so on. It is surprisingly different to what I'm used to from senior devs, which behave like they always suspect their own work is flawed and half assed. Like impostor syndrome was reversed. |
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| ▲ | progbits 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I've experienced the following sequence more than once at work, and I remain baffled by it each time: - Receive a huge vibecoded PR for complicated new feature. - Complain that this needs some design doc to figure out the right approach first. - Author says no need for design doc, easier to have vibed implementation and discuss the concrete code instead of abstract document. - I disagree (obviously), but review the PR with feedback along the lines: this entire approach is flawed, throw this out and start over. - Author gets defensive, says "but this is already working and ready, let's just merge". - I tell them there is no chance in hell this is getting merged. They go sulk to their manager that I'm not interested in helping them launch. | | | |
| ▲ | artyom 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I agree it's not "entitlement" specifically but there's something there. I guess by now everyone has experienced that type of person that "tries to help" by copy/pasting a bunch of AI slop and expecting you to work through the cognitive load of validating it. The original post sums it pretty well, such big output inherently meant big effort, which was a proxy for good faith. Now that's gone. | | |
| ▲ | Sharlin an hour ago | parent [-] | | It was a proof of work system. When work becomes cheap, it stops being proof. |
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| ▲ | skydhash 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > It is surprisingly different to what I'm used to from senior devs, which behave like they always suspect their own work is flawed and half assed I never trust my own code. And one of the motivations of trying to be fluent with my editor, is to be able to quickly look at it when a bug is reported. I also don’t trust another person with their description of their code. Any surprise, and I’m looking at the source if it’s a available. |
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| ▲ | Intralexical 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > What's surprising is that while many submitters take that fairly well, some people get really indignant, essentially calling the maintainers ungrateful. Why is it surprising that some people who expect results without spending any effort also feel entitled to receiving gratitude without putting in any thought? |
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| ▲ | Fraterkes 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | If I don’t word these critiques in the most diplomatic way possible, this immediately turns into a discussion about the prevalence of anti-ai sentiment on hn. Which would be boring. |
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| ▲ | jstummbillig 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > They've massively decreased the work they put in but still expect the same pre-ai reaction/gratitude when submitting a big PR. I don't think that follows. They expect things to improve, they do something about it and might (unreasonably) be frustrated by what they think is a policy that stands in the way of quicker progress. The first part is certain, the second part less so, and the third is just speculation. It's clear that open source project are struggling to understand what is going on and coming up with plans – like everyone else – but clearly there are better and worse ways to proceed in this new world, if popularity, adoption and progress are things you want to focus on. |
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| ▲ | zkry 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I can imagine in these cases the LLM is telling the "contributor" how smart they are and how much the project is loosing out, maybe saying something like: "It's not about maintaining project boundaries, it’s not about ensuring code quality; it’s a gatekeeping mechanism designed by traditionalists who feel threatened by forward-thinking creators like you who truly master the efficiency of AI." |
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| ▲ | cmiles74 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I wouldn’t be surprised to find out this is part of their RHLF training, the attitude is so prevalent in these models. | | |
| ▲ | throawayonthe 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | really? in the way the parent comment describes? (genuine) i suppose i've never encountered a context where it would be relevant for an LLM to output that, interesting |
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| ▲ | helloplanets 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If a project has a rule to not submit AI generated PRs, people should never submit AI generated PRs to that project. It's spam. Or if the rule is more nuanced than that in relation to AI, it should be respected. It's 100% an issue with the people with submitting these PRs. So, if someone has a history of having no issue with breaking project rules (let alone being arrogant about it), it should be a massive red flag about the person for any possible employer or future collaborator checking their profile, etc. Why people are wilfully destroying their own reputation like that is beyond me. It's infinitely better to have no activity at all on your profile than to create a track record of bad behaviour. |
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| ▲ | Forgeties79 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > What's surprising is that while many submitters take that fairly well, some people get really indignant, essentially calling the maintainers ungrateful. I would be more sympathetic if they actually spent meaningful time on these contributions and could maybe see an argument for wanting their work to be given due consideration (lots of caveats here), but from what I’ve seen that’s the exception rather than the rule with a lot of these case. |
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| ▲ | rurban 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| There massive value in AI PR's. If a feature and ignored, it can forked to provide more value to the users. If unaccepted bugfixes, the maintainers are just silly. They need to be forked off. |
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| ▲ | losvedir 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's interesting to see this perspective in the wild. In the age of AI I wonder what "massive value" your PR is bringing to the maintainer. $1 worth of tokens? | | |
| ▲ | rurban an hour ago | parent [-] | | As explained: New features. Bugfixes. Better analysis. Only stoneagers would say that they are better than a good AI. | | |
| ▲ | ecshafer 40 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I regularly find the code output of opus and gpt 5.5 to be garbage. Overly verbose, unnecessary abstractions, strange duplication of concepts across objects, unnecessary copying of objects and creation of objects. I have found its much more useful to just ping pong some ideas, have it generate helper methods, and do the code implementation by hand. I guess I am a stoneager. | |
| ▲ | throawayonthe 7 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | not to throw this word around, but, > Only stoneagers would say that they are better than a good AI. projection? lack of confidence in your own abilities? why make such a sweeping statement | | |
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| ▲ | bpicolo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean, aren't you kind of proving the poster's point? Fork away. If you want to put in the meaningful effort required to maintain and improve upon a project as significant as Godot, and feel that AI is a mechanism you want in order to do so, go for it. Clearly, the maintainers don't feel that that's the best approach to create the product they want to create, and they are not required to accede to the sense of entitlement of the community. | | |
| ▲ | rurban an hour ago | parent [-] | | Even before AI it was trivial to setup a continuous merge script. I did that several years for several projects which refused my PR's. Nowadays it's even more trivial. And a community is more of a burden than an advantage nowadays. Users are ok, but a community not so. See python, perl, ruby, node and countless others. |
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