Most slopcode projects are abandoned and deleted within months of release | Hacker News Reader

Most slopcode projects are abandoned and deleted within months of release

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60 pointsMBCook16 comments

Isn't the benefit from LLM that anyone can create that little software that does scratch the particular needs the user has. Once scratched it's done its job. Rinse and repeat the next time. There is no longer the need to clean and maintain code for the next time. A bit like fast fashion! We are doomed.

in that case, github is not the place for them. Nor show hn, or anywhere.

If they're to be trated as disposable, then they should be treated as disposable

Where’s the baseline? Most projects I’ve ever started since I was a teenager have been abandoned within months of release.

Heck, most projects I've ever worked on professionally, with budgets in the millions, have been abandoned far earlier than any of the initial sponsors hoped.

Well if AI can accelerate the slopware -> abandonware lifecycle then maybe net gain? We can move on more quickly after setting fire to a zillion tokens.

Ideally the single-use slop should just go straight into the self-satisfied user's system and never appear in the public "release" arena.

But we have to suffer through this awkward phase where people want to have it both ways. They don't want to run a successful collaborative development project, but the want the imagined accolades.

It's hard to really comprehend. It's a bit like people wanting to have fame as musicians for successfully pressing the buttons on a jukebox?

I mean, there are some pretty famous DJs out there

Where all the bits we slang in 2009 and MacBooks we breezed through in the 2010s?

Yeah, same place the tokens and MacBooks today end up

This shits a boulevard of broken dreams in a lot of ways

I agree. This is nothing new. And I would even state, that this applies to every sort of idea. Not only coding projects. AI makes an idea life cycle only a bit faster in some cases.

You were releasing projects teenage years? How many did you release?

I worked on Half-Life mods with friends I met in IRC in the late 90's - so about 13 onwards. We "released" stuff to forums all the time, though very few updates ever got released.

Less interesting stuff like basic save game editors too.

let's be clear

op doesn't provide code, so my effort stays at throwing in a claude session and providing code without ANY review

trust my numbers as much as you usually trust claude code

trust the original numbers as you usually trust no code

yes unfortunately there is no baseline

once you get past the article reporting, original study lives at https://geopjr.dev/blog/democratizing-abandonware

author provides no repo/code, but describes methodology

i run a 95% autonomous claude code session to re-run the experiment

after all, since he pulls pr/repo data for ai slop, I can just pull all data (not just ai slop) in the same time period and compare

https://github.com/rufasterisco/slopware

"ai slop prs/repos" starting numbers mostly match (120 to 199)

i only tested prs from github repos, bringing it down from 119 to 116

still, based on those numbers, looks like we are off by a neat 25%

could be different methodology or claude making mistakes

author mentions doing some manual cleanup

│ │ Original │ Ours │

│ Unique repos │ 120 │ 116 │

│ Maintained │ 32 (27%) │ 58 (50%) │

│ Abandoned │ 88 (73%) │ 58 (50%) │

2 given the above, this is what comparison to "baseline" looks like

as said, "baseline" here means PRs in the same period

│ │ AI Slop │ Baseline │

│ GitHub repos │ 116 │ 332 │

│ deleted / 404 │ 11.2% │ 4.8% │

│ ≥3mo stale (surviving)│ 43.7% │ 39.2% │

│ abandoned (total) │ 50.0% │ 42.2% │ │ alive │ 50.0% │ 57.8% │

post "github fetch" data lives in repo

if you want to run from zero, the repo has the scripts

it will download 600+ MB from github

separate topic, separate comment

i agree with your point: "we" always wrote code and abandoned it

the claim here is made against flatpak submissions, which involve pr reviews

i think a point being missed is that open source has always written code that was going to be reused by corps, but PRs in it were likely to help humans join open source, and develop coding skills

now they likely just provide RLFH to corps

Every programmer does this. Absolutely every last one of us.

What is apparently noteworthy now is that anyone can now have the ability to build and abandon a project just like Real Programmers do

Stop publishing them! Vibe coded projects are totally fine for your own consumption. But if you're not going to do the real hard work - build a community, fix bugs and add flexibility for all types of users - just keep it to yourself. Your slop project has no value to anybody.

Wait till you hear about about CMS migrations I did before AI existed.

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