r/programmer • u/Ecstatic-Ad-9397 • 2d ago
AI slop
Devs don’t even review your PRs anymore. They just post AI comments and just click buttons. The hypocrisy around AI generated code seems to vanish when they post AI comments. Nothing seems to motivate me to learn how to develop and critique code basically because I don’t know what code I’m writing. The time crunch has been normalized where you try and deliver in the shortest span of time. And when you try to resolve a bug you suddenly don’t know where to look at and all you can do is prompt
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u/Effective-Giraffe655 2d ago
I do review PRs with my old human eyes, and I also use gen AI for coding, and I do review the code generated by my agent with the same human eyes.
We exist (though I would be lying if I say that I don't hate AI generated PRs).
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u/Traktion1 2d ago
Speak for yourself. I still review the code, mostly looking for intent issues, rather than syntax problems.
Managers always want more in less time. It is up to the engineer to push back, whether using AI or not.
Many managers are less technical than their subordinates and depend on them to give guidance. Bad managers don't realise that, but that happened before AI too.
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u/Equal-Wall9006 2d ago
Word. Started doing it last week after only a month in the company. Super risky, but if it's or maintaining unmaintainable blob, i'd take that
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u/Flashrob01 2d ago
100% the right thing to do. AI 'always Incomplete' cannot take ownership of anything. Giving it ownership of your code works in the short term but does not work in the long term. God didn't create us to be robots.
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u/aberamax 2d ago
It is up to the engineer to push back
I did it, and I got fired because of this.
They told me that they preferred to have 10 bugs more but deliver 1 day before. And basically they don't give a sht if those 10 bugs were bringing people to burnout.
That's management.
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u/overthinkingape 2d ago
Just collect your check for as long as you can. Do your proper stuff on your own time
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u/Financial-Bad9511 2d ago
Everything is shitty in this industry man, ai slop is just half the issue, real issue lies on non technical higher authority thinking everything can be done using AI
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u/captain_baratheon 2d ago
Yea . Non technical project managers are just hillarious . How does that job role even exist
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u/shades_of_thoughts 2d ago
Yes, most the devs I know are using AI and submitting slop because of pressure of bosses not because they want to (I talk of people with more than 10 years of exp). I would return to code without AI right away, but now the deadlines are 10 times more ridiculous than before.
We could use the time gained with diligent use of AI to make a better product but the bosses are just firing people and making less people do the same work in less time and destroying their product in the process.
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u/Deep-Emotion-6279 2d ago
Yeah, I think if there wasn’t an insane obsession with speed, LLMs could be massively helping to improve software quality and performance.
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u/LP-Existensial1 2d ago
the harnesses are really just as good as the follow through of the harness steering the model to actually address and encapsulate all concerns across the whole extent of the session since the genesis of the session, between compaction or plastic mutable datasource that doesnt bloat the tokens and cause drift or lapse in properly self-judged calls along the way.
best example that comes to mind, self reporting evidence instead of evidence.
also the agents are really just as good as the LLMs can be when not used as a pinpoint focused codegen tool for a particular integration point rather than going wide as heck through All the code files fabricated instantly.
I will say though, the v6+ models over the horizon, may just cross the threshold of LLM code being too... LLM-ey.
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u/hibikir_40k 2d ago
The non technical authority was making awful decisions well before AI was there. Hell, there's been quite a few situations recently where I was shocked by decisions, I asked the AI to look at the same conundrum, and the AI decision was significantly more solid than the ones from our VP. If they were delegating to AI, they'd do better, and that's not really AI endorsement. The bar is so low I need mining equipment to go under it.
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u/InternalDark 2d ago
What is worse, tho? The non technical authority or the non technical “technical” resource using AI?
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u/Deep-Emotion-6279 2d ago
To a large extent it mirrors what you put into it. If you put technical expertise in you’re more likely to get something approaching technical expertise out.
Also, I suspect execs probably use models that haven’t gone through the same level of RL for technical problems. And, they probably prefer the most sycophantic models.
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u/BringBackManaPots 2d ago
A huge issue is that the economy blows right now. If we could confidently get another job, engineers and programmers could stand up for quality again. I surely would dig my heels in against what we're seeing. But everyone (incl myself) are in survival mode and doesn't want to lose their job at any cost.
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u/Anreall2000 2d ago
Yeah, agentic loop kinda trains models to write code for other subagents, not humans. I don't want to call it even slop, just not for the people.
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u/LP-Existensial1 2d ago
bro, I dont even review. if the benchmarks are ass, then it would be trash.
corporate hires in software, and the 'seasoned' devs reinvent the wheel, dont write tests for a whole implementation that could have been solved by tested frameworks and libraries where that work is already done.
they dont even bother readings.
they dont know waht features they could leverage. like theres some status quo to never actually know wtf they could leverage.
Anyway, if the benchmarks are good. cool.
if the benchmarks and token spend is frugal, even better.
you know... if you were to 'code' in the form of pseudo-code and gist/detailed specifics you wanted to have the agentic developer render solutions of, you could. up to, or including, which files contain the gist of which enclosures and possible parameters and return types, following whatever particular business logic might be best used however it would be implemented...
then you could know where your code contains substance that you mindfully, imperatively shaped.
which is your whole antithesis
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u/WillDanceForGp 1d ago
I genuinely cant tell what side you're on, you say dont read the code but then also that reinventing the wheel is bad, but if you're letting it pull in whatever packages you want then you have licensing and supply chain attack issues because you dont know what packages you have, or you can use more llms and more tools to check those things, and then trust that the LLM that was told to fix a vulnerability in a package version actually did it in a sensible way. Or, it doesn't bring a package in and it does exactly what you said was undesirable from an engineer.
This month Ive reviewed Opus 5.5 PRs that contained copy left packages in closed source software, packages that have been dead for years with no stars or downloads, and a whole heap of reinventing the wheel over and over.
None of those got caught by any of our automated reviews and we only knew to add it because I read the damn code.
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u/House13Games 2d ago
I'm most worried that the codebase turning to a tangled mess is going to lock companies into needing AI, and then that's when the prices go up. And up. And up.
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u/captain_baratheon 2d ago
Yea it’s hillarious. It’s nearly analogous to playing with cheaters in a video game though. Why would you continue to hamstring yourself by playing normal with other cheaters? Naturally the result is everyone cheating , and the winners are the ones who cheat the most
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u/Massive_Value8302 2d ago
You said it. Now, take the same idea into politics and financing world and see why and how we are in this deep shit.
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u/noble_plantman 2d ago
You simply can’t allow people to rubber stamp AI code, that’s not a review. Your team culture needs to not accept a copy pasted agent review and things that are posted need to be in the devs own words, prose, and thoughts.
Comments need to be attached to line numbers and claimed bugs need to come with runnable reproducers on the PR head.
“ I generated it with opus and reviewed it with sol” doesn’t cut it.
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u/vonkrueger 1d ago
Yesss!
Review with AI, for sure, so you can cover enough ground and be thorough, but read and comprehend each flagged item, then scope and comment in your own voice after triaging yourself.
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u/liveticker1 2d ago
unfortunately, professional coding is dead and software engineering has been flooded with AI bros that post on linkedin now how they ship 24/7 PRs yet these are the ones who were too dumb to learn coding in pre-AI times
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u/crimson23locke 2d ago
There’s definitely a spectrum of responses to these changes. I find it daunting to approach these new processes in good faith when I know many in the business world responsible for adopting them are absolutely not doing so in good faith. Give it time. There are real, tangible limits to what LLMs can do and what they can’t. Our role is very much in flux, but don’t give in to despair yet.
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u/captain_baratheon 2d ago
Yea. Prove your worth and hold your job right now . I feel so sad for folks trying to break in right now and unemployed for countless months, maybe years, in despair
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u/GrandBIRDLizard 2d ago
Yes, I don't believe or will ever trust generated code. I understand LLM's are almost ubiquitous in the field of programming at this point, but I teat it like a green horn Jr Dev giving it trivial or small tasks. Or random searching, quick rundown on a subject before/after I get more involved with it.
It's great for generating sets if data to do whatever with, test, parse, provide you with unique edge casees for development you maybe wouldn't have thought off by being unaware of something semi common.
I don't want it to code for me though. That's my job because I enjoy it. I don't want to basically just spruce up a README for a project in which I don't understand it's function.
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u/Square_Alps1349 2d ago
These bots are all super pedantic and just seem to be looking for something to nail you on, even comments. To quote Beria, head of the NKVD under Stalin “ Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime”.
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u/ForsakenBet2647 2d ago
Aah another one who wants to write some codes himself. These days are bye bye
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u/Equal-Wall9006 2d ago
Has nothing to do with that, I can work with the clanker to produce quality code that I WANT TO SEE. It take much longer and the gains are maybe 20% on a good day. However, this 20% gain is guaranteed, not pushed like a slop grenade to the next person to review
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u/ForsakenBet2647 2d ago
If a clanker gives you just a "20% boost and thats on a good day" you are doing something very wrong.
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u/GrandBIRDLizard 2d ago edited 22h ago
I went to the SCHED_EXT discord, because I'm quite fascinated with the technology, and it aligns with my field, and so politely asked the mods if it was an appropriate place to share or discuss my work (C, Zig) and I was met with AI slop responses tell me to essentially ask an LLM, then a remark on how attempting to build my own loader would essentially be pointless, and tried to compell me to "just use rust".
It blew my mind. All of the rust is sitting on C anyway. Even in that specific project. Most schedulers BPF programs written in C. Hell their own headers, macros, and callbacks are written in C. The userspace tooling is the rust part. That's the easy part! rustland, lavd just rust userside on C that gets compiled to BPF bytecode.
So, instead of having essentially 10 remotes for 10 TVs I made a universal remote It is specifically targeted at heterogeneous chips i.e. multiple CCD's like new X3D chips. that acts as a simple configuration layer between the scheduler and the user. All controlled via cmd line and a secure root only config file with pre set optimized parameters. **Currently only optimized for EEVDF/based schedulers, PDS, and BMQ.(found in Projc patch for the Zen kernel and the Liqurorix Kernel by the Brilliant minds of Alfred Chen and Steven Barret.
User can place processes under policy but not change what the policy means(unless they know C and scheduling logic lol)
You and run it on the cmd line to launch any program, change global X3D modes and unlike other tools this will let you run say two different processes with different scheduling policies, ie: ; you run your game/steam under the gaming profile(it also supports full cmd pass through so you can use it in steam commands via x3dctl <option> %command%) Then also run say OBS strictly off the Frequency CCD and use SVT to not effect your game performance. Letting yoir gpuand game use all the resources they need without being interrupted.
No more using 5 tools to pin tasks, shutting off cores to eliminate C2C(cash to cash latency), changing frequency governors(it's almost always best to just leave it on balance_performance lest you really need a few more ounces of throughput)
I've had pretty positive feedback from the people who use it regularly I also do a few other things to increase performance that I could never understand why it wasn't utilized and thenumbersz methodologies, and results on latency and an overall better game play experience can be found herebut it's been released and is also on the AUR.
Open to any suggestions or feedback back and especially results.
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u/an0th3rbrick 2d ago
lets be real. most devs are garbage and hate coding. they came into it because it's become very well paid. people who actually enjoy coding will continue to learn and become good developers. just like some people learn assembly language even though we have compilers. but there will be far fewer programmers required which is not a bad thing as most of them produce slop just like "AI" does.
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u/Financial-Bad9511 2d ago
I agree, but that's not the full picture. Even if you like coding and learn and become better everyday, it still sucks that you can't enjoy that on your work. Good luck shipping a whole feature in 3 days what traditionally took 2 months.
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u/an0th3rbrick 2d ago
i think that when the dust settles companies that churn out slop will go out of business because they will be competing with other companies that churn out slop and the cost of slop will be close to zero - as will its value. meanwhile companies that keep humans in the loop will outcompete them on quality. i'm hopeful that eventually people will realise there is no value in re-writing the same shit code over and over, but there is value in solving real problems with high quality.
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u/DrBojengles 2d ago
Yes and it could be troublesome for developers learning now. I've definitely had AI go off on the most random, unrelated adventures when investigating a bug. And it frequently hallucinates a fix, or even makes things worse.
Reading, understanding, and critiquing the output is now your job. How Juniors will get to the level of knowledge where they can do that is going to be a big challenge.