Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
Oct 11, 2026, 6:50 PMA year ago or so, people were saying "if LLMs can code where's the shovelware"
The monkey's paw curls🥲
Replies
Christian Tietzectietze@mastodon.socialOct 11, 2026, 6:53 PM@nina_kali_nina haha yeah.... 🫥
Oct 11, 2026, 7:04 PM@nina_kali_nina I think there really was a shift between Claude 4.5 in sept 2025 and pre Claude 4.5. Pre Claude 4.5 was able to trick executives into thinking it could write code… Claude 4.5 was the first version that tricked a substantial number of coders into thinking it could write code
(wording edited after the fact to avoid unintended implications)
- Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbtOct 11, 2026, 7:30 PM
@mcc I'm not sure because I've heard the same sentiment repeatedly about different versions of the models. I'd think it's some hot shit if I didn't have to review so much slop tagged "Co-Authored by: Mythos"
- Oct 11, 2026, 7:32 PM
@nina_kali_nina slopcoders have varied, deeply specific, and unreliable claims about which models are good or bad. what i think is important is not what slopcoders think, since they're slopcoders and therefore unreliable, but actual behavior. shovelware developers largely adopted "ai code assistants", in my estimation, between september 2025 (claude 4.5) and march 2026 (claude 4.6). Note this makes no statement about the quality of the models; something changed, but it could have been marketing.
- Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbtOct 11, 2026, 7:42 PM
@mcc my guess is that it's a change of tooling, e.g. wider popularity of Cursor, Claude app, Antigravity etc etc. But obviously it's just a guess
- Oct 11, 2026, 7:43 PM
@nina_kali_nina Perhaps that's true, but Cursor was available for quite some time before the Vibe Shift and did not seem to cause a vibe shift on its own. When did the "claude app" become available?
- Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbtOct 11, 2026, 7:45 PM
@mcc May 2025 public, October 2025 wide access
Edit: apparently it went viral over winter holidays
- Oct 11, 2026, 7:46 PM
@nina_kali_nina Huh! It is very plausible to me you are correct
- Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbtOct 11, 2026, 7:48 PM
@mcc Antigravity is November, too
Oct 11, 2026, 8:02 PM@nina_kali_nina @mcc Similarly everyone in the community I work in has been giving keynotes saying “somehow around November last year it suddenly became useful”, to the point that I’d internalised it as common knowledge.
- Oct 11, 2026, 8:04 PM
@h0m54r @nina_kali_nina My working assumption was that this was entirely a cultural shift and didn't correspond to any particular thing that changed. At least, I suspect the right kind of cultural shift could have produced the effect we saw without any technical changes whatsoever.
Ryanfullywoolly@mastodon.socialOct 12, 2026, 1:16 AM@mcc @h0m54r @nina_kali_nina I heard rumblings online, but didn't personally see fervor about it until late January. Probably as Nina mentioned it going viral. I don't have a lot of software friends though.
I wonder if there was a PR campaign that drove it.
ROTOPE~1 ⭐️rotopenguin@mastodon.socialOct 11, 2026, 7:04 PM@nina_kali_nina since you played "Stardew Valley", you might also like (infinite scroll of AI generated anime tiddy jigsaw puzzle games ensues)
Fritz AdalisFritzAdalis@infosec.exchangeOct 11, 2026, 8:45 PM@nina_kali_nina
Isn't almost all software now shovelware?- Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbtOct 11, 2026, 9:05 PM
@FritzAdalis and LLMs still can't* code, yeah :)