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Comment by ishan0102 | Hacker News Reader

I much prefer this over the alternative where people use AI to code without anyone knowing.

No, the post doesn't say about hiding that, you can write "created by AI" or "helped by LLM". The post is about advertising for commercial products.

Their rant was about any and all AI notices in commits. They specifically state that merge requests is where that belongs.

I personally disagree and think commit messages makes the most sense. But I also think it's up to the personal preference of whoever owns the repository.

Not true. They state “just add "generated by an LLM" but do not give those companies free advertising space”, and the reference to merge requests is specifically in regard to disclosing which AI tool was used.

Perhaps it's good to know which one, like knowing what harmful ingredients are in your food so you can avoid ones you know are unsafe.

They do add a “or just don’t use them at all” which shows the author’s true opinion

Who really cares, though? AI is just a tool. If the code is good, the code is good.

Bad AI code can look superficially good in a way that bad human code doesn’t. That’s why AI attribution is useful. That’s before you know whether the code is actually good.

>Who really cares, though?

some people certainly do, to the extent of not caring at all about the outcome, only being concerned with the fact that the process was 'tainted' by ai.

the fervor for/against ai can approach the level of religion for some people.

> some people certainly do, to the extent of not caring at all about the outcome, only being concerned with the fact that the process was 'tainted' by ai.

It's one thing if you're using AI to create code in a corporate context. Not my issue when some GPL code gets AI-laundered into production code and it eventually crops up. That's for legal, the C level and whatever AI provider's indemnification to sort out. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

But for personal projects? Ain't no way AI touches that stuff, ever. I simply don't want to deal with even the potential risk of getting expensive nastygrams from lawyers.

Ideologues always get outcompeted by people with a pragmatic outlook.

Software is probably the worst landscape.

Tabs vs spaces Vim vs emacs Dozens of programming languages that do the same

... on a long enough timescale that has, historically, varied from decades to a couple of millenia, give or take.

I am talking about software specifically.

it is a religion for some people. idolatry is idolatry.

I can at least see where those people are coming from

AI can be a phenomenal tool for development when used correctly...

... But there is also now a trend on GitHub of low to no-skill individuals going around spamming garbage work in order to play the numbers game for their resume. When asked why they did something or to change it, they just act as a middleman for the robot and show no understanding or initiative.

So I can understand how it's become a turnoff for some people. I used to think it was a dumb rule until a project I work on started being spammed with said junk PRs

Oh, I know -- people need to get over it, IMO. Judge the outcome, not the process.

Imagine using software tools on a computer to make a computer do work without telling anybody that you used software tools on a computer to make the computer do the work. That's just disgusting. Matrix multiplication was invented by the devil.

You're missing the lack of verification. Normal computer tools can be verified to work reliably. Cat can be tested to copy data. Sort can be confirmed to sort properly. You can't verify that a coding agent can reliably produce code. It's not even easy to check over since the errors aren't something you can systematically find.

>Normal computer tools can be verified to work reliably. Cat can be tested to copy data. Sort can be confirmed to sort properly.

Right. You can indeed verify that a given computer program can reliably copy or sort data.

>You can't verify that a coding agent can reliably produce code

That's not the goal. You don't need to verify that a coding agent can reliably produce "code". You only need to verify that the solution produced by the agent solves a given problem. And that's already been done and verified many, many times. I hear most code is written by LLMs nowadays, and not all of their users are idiots.

I don't agree. The process that produced the code is an essential part of code review. I frequently run into hacks that I'll approve if, and only if, I trust that some competent human being has explored the alternatives and judged they're the best way forward.

> AI is just a tool. If the code is good, the code is good.

The problem is, someone has to review it (lest you end up like Amazon, offing parts of AWS and once the main storefront due to vibeslop ending up in production).

And I personally hate reviewing AI code with a passion. With a junior, easy, I can guide and teach them - and hopefully next time, they'll have improved. That's what I'm there for. But with AI? No matter if it's me using an AI or reviewing an MR created with AI assistance by a colleague - I can be pretty sure that next round I'll get exactly the same issues again because, by definition, AI agents are inference, not training, and thus incapable of improving unless the overlords want it to.

On top of that, if not very carefully guided, AI tends to create the ultimate sloppypasta - thousands of lines of code in a single file, completely impossible even for an ADHD brain to understand what is going on. But when you go and write an AGENTS.md or carefully engineer prompts... at that level of effort, you could just do it yourself.

Why put anything in commit messages at all? You can just figure it out by reading the diff.

We don't need comments in the code either. Well written code is easily grokd

Ugh

I feel that pain to my soul - I was once threatened with disciplinary action for putting comments in my code

AI code is never good.

The problem is who verifies that the code is good. With AI slop all the effort goes to the reviewer. At least before AI, the effort wasn’t as daunting as it is now (anyone can generate thousands of loc effortlessly)

In my projects I use /codegen and /llm directories. All regular generated (such as sqlc) code goes in /codegen and LLM-generated code in /llm.

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