All the devs saying that Anthropic’s code quality is “normal” are telling on themselves and everybody they’ve worked with
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All the devs saying that Anthropic’s code quality is “normal” are telling on themselves and everybody they’ve worked with
(Also supports what many have been saying about software quality being a crisis that precedes LLMs, but that’s another story)
@baldur one famous PHP user once said, “There's a rewrite in 3 years,” and that's the mindset of many programmers today.
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All the devs saying that Anthropic’s code quality is “normal” are telling on themselves and everybody they’ve worked with
(Also supports what many have been saying about software quality being a crisis that precedes LLMs, but that’s another story)
@baldur actual developers waiting to clean up the mess in a few years
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@Tamtam @Tijn @baldur The reasons for caring are different. I care for both reasons in my work, but I think it's somewhat elitist to demand that, in order to work in this field, someone has to view it as an artisnal craft.
Someone can reasonably view it as purely a job, but still respect that it's a job where people's safety is on the line if they fuck it up.
The reason I bring this up is that too often, when we just focus on the artisnal aspect, the pro-AI and AI-curious crowd sneer at it as they would if we were expecting everyone to buy handmade furniture or hand-sewn clothing - fields where there is certainly a reason to respect the artisnal element, but where nobody's safety is on the line when you don't, and where most business-minded people aren't going to respect it.
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@baldur Remember when Elon declared he was going to use lines of code produced on printouts as something he wanted to judge Twitter employees on when deciding who should and shouldn't be fired? It's that mindset made into a machine.
@Rycochet@furs.social @baldur@toot.cafe Coding idiots yield GIGO
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@raffaella @Tijn @baldur anyone *can* code, given the right training. But not everyone *wants* to code. And the people who do it, only because they want a paycheck, and not because they want to code, were the start of this decline.
That "anyone" looks pretty elitist to me as I care for a blind 91 year old with dementia and severe recall deficits.
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@hyc @raffaella @Tijn @baldur anyone _can_ code, whether they choose to do so for passion or for money, because it's a skill. Also a job is a job, no need to frame coding as something "super special that only special people should do".
On the other hand, governments cutting funds for arts, humanities and social sciences and telling that "the future is code" - that's what put many people in the position where they're doing jobs far removed from their innate curiosities. And grifters, well, they can be found in every lucrative field.@hostia @hyc @raffaella @baldur > Also a job is a job, no need to frame coding as something "super special that only special people should do".
I agree coding shouldn't be regarded as some kind of special job only special people can or should be doing.
But that being said, I hope everyone cares about the job they're doing, and try to understand how and why they're doing it the way they are, regardless of what the actual job is!
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@baldur actual developers waiting to clean up the mess in a few years
@TheStoneDonkey @baldur nope, I'm not looking forward to the Great Cleanup of 2028. There will be a Great Rewrite of 2035 which might be more interesting.
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All the devs saying that Anthropic’s code quality is “normal” are telling on themselves and everybody they’ve worked with
(Also supports what many have been saying about software quality being a crisis that precedes LLMs, but that’s another story)
@baldur I'm not one of those people, but I have been saying it for some time

I mean...the industry just expressed shock not too long ago that you need to review the code generated by AI's. I think this was last week or something...
Yeah, it's all stupid as fuck, run by chucklefucks, and overrun by people who just want to make lots of money and don't give two fucks about any of this shit.
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@Tamtam @Tijn @baldur The reasons for caring are different. I care for both reasons in my work, but I think it's somewhat elitist to demand that, in order to work in this field, someone has to view it as an artisnal craft.
Someone can reasonably view it as purely a job, but still respect that it's a job where people's safety is on the line if they fuck it up.
The reason I bring this up is that too often, when we just focus on the artisnal aspect, the pro-AI and AI-curious crowd sneer at it as they would if we were expecting everyone to buy handmade furniture or hand-sewn clothing - fields where there is certainly a reason to respect the artisnal element, but where nobody's safety is on the line when you don't, and where most business-minded people aren't going to respect it.
@dalias @Tijn @baldur I do get your point. And yet, there seem a few things are very debatable here:
1. To try and divorce the work of an artisan or artist from the care and devotion it took to make it, gives a way the impoverished USamerican materialist. It makes no sense to anyone else.
2.if you can't find the space to put effort and love into making something meaningful and beautiful, may it be a work of art or the relationship to your kid, something is fundamentally wrong in your life, something AI can certainly not fix and you should do something about it .. And if it's systemic, well, start a revolution then, I guess.
I'm kind of just debating for the sake of it. I have heard of this argument but its definitively a non starter with me. It's a symptom of something much more deeply wrong with the US culture in my eyes. And I know about stress and not having time. but sorry . The value is in the devotion. In the creativity.That's where the beauty is being born. No shortcut to that.
This reminds me of how scary the US culture was to me, when I visited. -
All the devs saying that Anthropic’s code quality is “normal” are telling on themselves and everybody they’ve worked with
(Also supports what many have been saying about software quality being a crisis that precedes LLMs, but that’s another story)
@baldur Make software vendors (and their C-suite) financially liable for damages caused by their product, and their C-suite criminally liable if human death occurs because of en error.
Minimum 10 year sentence for C-suite for abuse, or leaking, of user private data.
I think we will all have a more secure, stable, and financially prosperous life because of this.
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@dalias @Tijn @baldur I do get your point. And yet, there seem a few things are very debatable here:
1. To try and divorce the work of an artisan or artist from the care and devotion it took to make it, gives a way the impoverished USamerican materialist. It makes no sense to anyone else.
2.if you can't find the space to put effort and love into making something meaningful and beautiful, may it be a work of art or the relationship to your kid, something is fundamentally wrong in your life, something AI can certainly not fix and you should do something about it .. And if it's systemic, well, start a revolution then, I guess.
I'm kind of just debating for the sake of it. I have heard of this argument but its definitively a non starter with me. It's a symptom of something much more deeply wrong with the US culture in my eyes. And I know about stress and not having time. but sorry . The value is in the devotion. In the creativity.That's where the beauty is being born. No shortcut to that.
This reminds me of how scary the US culture was to me, when I visited.@Tamtam @Tijn @baldur I don't entirely disagree with you, but I also don't think rejecting the collapse of civilization to slop can be something we predicate on getting people whose minds are stuck in USian materialism to change their worldviews. Not because they don't need to change, but because that kind of change takes time and we are exploding the amount of harm our systems are doing right now with "AI".
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@dalias @Tijn @baldur I think this framing is a sort of victim blaming. It is not the individual developers who must love and care about the craft. It is the organizations who must mandate, validate, and ultimately incentivize quality. When all funding for architecture, design, QA and maintenance are cut and everything is left to the developer it is an organizational failure, not an individual one. I don’t need my plumber to love their craft, I just need them to follow code and pass inspection. I do agree that this was a problem long before LLMs came along.
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@dalias @Tijn @baldur I think this framing is a sort of victim blaming. It is not the individual developers who must love and care about the craft. It is the organizations who must mandate, validate, and ultimately incentivize quality. When all funding for architecture, design, QA and maintenance are cut and everything is left to the developer it is an organizational failure, not an individual one. I don’t need my plumber to love their craft, I just need them to follow code and pass inspection. I do agree that this was a problem long before LLMs came along.
@pier @Tijn @baldur I think you're saying exactly what I was trying to say. As someone doing a job you don't have an obligation to love and care for the craft. But the organization you're working for has an obligation to make sure you pay all due attention to safety of the things you produce and to design the process accounting for the possibility that you might fail to do so. Not to incentivize you to cut corners or look the other way when you do.
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@baldur Make software vendors (and their C-suite) financially liable for damages caused by their product, and their C-suite criminally liable if human death occurs because of en error.
Minimum 10 year sentence for C-suite for abuse, or leaking, of user private data.
I think we will all have a more secure, stable, and financially prosperous life because of this.
@baldur I expect complaints against my proposal from people saying "regulation is bad" and "Things will be more expensive."
I hope they move someplace where agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and medicine have no regulations. Where there is not torts law.
We will see how that goes.