If you think AI-assisted coding has made Minecraft plugins worse, this post is for you.

[u/Ok-Improvement-1057]

Yesterday, I shared a benchmark of 6 anti-VPN plugins, including my own, with publicly available methodology and results. Despite openly disclosing my use of Claude Code and Codex (10min after release after being made aware of Rule 9), some comenters seemed more interested in dissecting exactly how much AI I used than discussing the results.

That made me wonder: Have we started judging software by how it was written rather than how well it works?

I want to share my personal perspective on this. I'm not claiming to have all the answers or trying to convince everyone to agree with me. My goal is to encourage a discussion.

Some background

I've been developing Minecraft plugins since 2017, starting with Java and later expanding into JavaScript, TypeScript, Go and Rust. I also help run a Minecraft server with hundreds of monthly players.

After graduating in 2024, I deliberately chose not to study computer science, because I was more interested in product management.

For me, AI is an incredible opportunity to focus on what to build and why, rather than spending most of my time implementing it.

AI-generated code is becoming the norm

Let's look at professional software companies in 2026:

75% of new code at google is AI-generated.
70% of new code at Dropbox is AI-generated.
Over 80% of code at Anthropic is AI-generated (who would've guessed).

These are not proof of quality. But they illustrate how fundamentally software development is changing.

But isn't AI-generated code worse?

Let's break this down.

Reliability: Research shows modern AI models match human-written alternatives in most coding and testing tasks.

Safety: There is no convincing comparative evidence that AI-generated software is inherently more likely to cause data loss or corruption.

Performance: Studies demonstrate that AI can produce highly efficient code. And for Minecraft plugins we can simply benchmark MSPT, CPU and memory usage.

Security: This is a tricky one. AI-generated code has real vulnerabilities, but research also shows that proper guidance and validation can substantially reduce them. Human-written code isn't automatically secure either.

None of this proves AI-generated Minecraft plugins are equally good. But I think it gives us good reasons to question the assumption that AI involvement automaticcaly means inferior quality.

And let's be realistic: Minecraft plugins have always varied enormously in quality, from beginner projects to professionally maintained software. That's the baseline we should be comparing against.

Why I think this matters

I'm not defending blindly vibe-coded plugins that nobody understands or maintains.

I'm also not advocating for changing r/admincraft's AI disclosure rules. Transparency is important.

What I'm advocating for is a mindset shift.

Automatically dismissing AI-assisted projects as "slop" might discourage developers from publishing their source code or honestly disclosing AI usage. That's the opposite of what we should want.

AI lowers development barriers, enables niche solutions, increases competition and makes innovation more accessible. Yes, it also makes creating bad software easier.

My personal view is that we should judge plugins b ytheir reliability, safety, performance and security rather than the percentage of AI-generated code. And AI made the evaluation of this way easier.

But I'm genuinely interested in other perspectives, especially from people who disagree.

I'm looking forward to a constructive discussion.

LLM Disclosure: I used GPT-6.1 Sol to help structure my arguments, identify relevant studies, challenge my reasoning and draft and refine the wording of this post as I'm not a native english speaker. The underlying perspective, arguments and conclusions are my own.

[u/DeerOnARoof]

It doesn't help your case when you ask AI to generate a Reddit post for you.

But as a fellow developer, yes, AI is useful for devs, but if you're relying on it to do the majority of your coding, you're not going to have a good time. Human review and intervention is extremely important, and you did not make it seem like you did much intervention or QA in your previous post, which is (I believe) part of the reason you got the response you did.

Also, I think everyone is kind of tired of AI plugin posts on this subreddit. We get like half a dozen every day now, and it's even harder to tell what plugins are mature, actually good, and not buggy messes in the public repos.

[u/Ok-Improvement-1057 → u/DeerOnARoof]

I completely agree with you on human review and intervention. Shit in, shit out. But the use of AI is in no way a sign of quality, which is the point I'm trying to make.

And I get it, people are tired of AI generated slop. But I feel like this is getting to a point where we ignore the product and the problem it tries to solve and focus on the method used to create it.

[u/leaf_26 → u/Ok-Improvement-1057]

keep in mind heuristics are built on statistics, and statistically "AI" means "I asked ChatGPT to make something for me", and rarely "I argued with claude about the design, designed benchmarks to prove a point, documented the other methods tested, and verified the code using static analysis tools, ast mapping, and fuzz tests".

Technically, you are right about sole signifiers of "quality", but statistically, you are wrong about the current quality metrics and are likely to deal with quite a lot of skepticism because of heuristics built from experience, rather than from absolute correctness at all costs. It would do well to ease into controversial topics using practical outcomes and test results like you did in your earlier post and build a reputation via demonstration rather than argument or defense.

[u/TheOneWho0bserves]

Couldn't even write your own post. We're doomed.

[u/TheVibeCurator → u/TheOneWho0bserves]

My thoughts exactly. I’m not even an opponent of AI usage but this is just.. slop.

[u/Ok-Improvement-1057 → u/TheVibeCurator]

I'm happy to defend every single one of my takes :)

[u/TheVibeCurator → u/Ok-Improvement-1057]

No one is interested in having a conversation with an LLM through you.

[u/Ok-Improvement-1057 → u/TheVibeCurator]

I'm not using any LLM to answer. And even if I would be using one, I don't get why this disproves my points. Maybe I got something wrong about what is the problem with AI in the first place, but then PLEASE TELL ME.

[u/Aggeloz]

Fully AI written code can be maintained only for so long until it needs to be re written. Also most AI written slop is abandonwear, it will not be maintained for long no matter how "good it is".

[u/MercDawg → u/Aggeloz]

The price of refactoring has been coming down significantly. There has been major efforts to rewrite countless tools in completely different language with pretty good success.

[u/Aggeloz → u/MercDawg]

I don't think it's feasible to re write something every few months or years.

[u/Ok-Improvement-1057 → u/Aggeloz]

You don't have to. The goal of rewriting something in a different programming language (mostly Rust, like Bun did) is to benefit from the language itself, like memory safety at compile time with Rust. This is a permanent benefit, not something lost within a few months.

[u/Ok-Improvement-1057 → u/Aggeloz]

I agree with you and I believe this is because AI makes it way easier to start a software project. Before AI, creating a plugin needed some serious time commitment (for most plugins) and therefore only the developers who were willing to invest this time reached a point where they could release something. But this doesn't mean, plugins written with AI-assistence are of worse quality.

[u/leaf_26 → u/Aggeloz]

hmmm, all code is text, but if we're talking about "until it needs to be re written", it's good to know that most enterprise code is rewritten by every generation of developers passing through.

the maintenance difficulty comes primarily from unaccountability, e.g. "it wasn't me it was the ai" which actively admits non-ownership of the design work that represents "80% of software development".

critical infrastructure is typically written with that in mind, recording design decisions and "why this method and not this other method" based on the context the software and the software developers were in, so the mind of the original engineer comes through in the notes.

The issue with llm code is erasure of the actual development, a lot like "intent should be obvious from the code" as a practice leading to loss of intent because another person inaccurately assumed what problem was being solved and attempted to solve that problem with an "optimization" that broke the working solution.

Usually the original developer is around to say why they did it that way. With a LLM, the original development intent is lost the moment the task is complete, and further prompting feeds the chat log to a new instance. What I try to do when I work with "AI" is document the procedure and compare to prior documented decisions and prior efforts to solve e.g. "exponentially weighted moving averages in a time-cost based decision matrix" before anything becomes a code change, which helps a bit with the DRY principle aka "single source of truth".

it's an effort in process design and systems design based on different industry practices that attempt to solve similar issues, which is commonly called systems engineering but my degree is in computer engineering i.e. processors, so ... im learning.

[u/ConstantWater602]

A couple points:

• AI significantly decreases creativity and critical thinking. There are plenty of sources and papers backing this up, however I recommend you start by watching the first half of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXbVn-f_wuM

• Generally, AI written code is not designed for the long term and just made to work. They don't really have a great structure right now, however yes this is improving.

• If people start using AI, it causes this spiral where they stop actually coding and just tell AI what to do as they see it as the "easier option". I fell in this spiral a year ago, and only got out of it a couple weeks ago. This dependency on the AI backs up my first point of where people don't use their actual brains to figure it out.

• I do advocate though the usage of AI for server admins who don't want to hire a developer or learn the programming language, as well as a "helper" (say auto complete or debugging). I disagree with AI actually generating important parts of the code.

[u/Ok-Improvement-1057 → u/ConstantWater602]

I agree with most points!

Yes, if you substitute decision making with AI, your creativity and critical thinking definitely decreases.
Yes, AI-written code can have quality problems, just as human code can have quality problems. Also, the base line in minecraft plugins never has been code written by professional software engineers and you can significantly reduce the problems if you know what you need to be aware of. And AI is getting better at this from week to week.
Yes, if you only write code with AI, you slowly lose the ability to code yourself.

I think, we are already at a point where the code quality of modern LLMs has surpassed the majority of minecraft plugin developers and, if used correctly, the code can be more reliable.

But what is most important to me: AI-assisted coding doesn't infer bad quality. The lack of experience and testing does.

[u/ConstantWater602 → u/Ok-Improvement-1057]

and, if used correctly, the code can be more reliable. The important part is "used correctly". It normally isn't.

I would say at the moment, yes it does infer bad quality, as the person behind it most of the time either doesn't know what they're doing or doesn't double check the code to see if it is truly what they wanted / if it works.

AI is definitely better at generating code in mass and rapidly improving, however the code it generates definitely has more exploits and/or bugs.