Oct 18, 2026, 7:25 PMIf you dislike AI please stop saying that AI can code now. AI can't fucking code. Just because it can generate code that works for some very loose definition of the word works doesn't mean it can code because coding is so much more than that. Please, I'm begging you, you do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to them
Oct 18, 2026, 7:28 PM@eniko Endlessly assuming every pro-AI claim is exaggerated and endlessly getting vindicated. The (partial) exceptions like decompiling do feel a bit spooky, though.
Oct 18, 2026, 9:18 PM@Tereya @eniko I guess I'm not even sure what would be "concerning" regardless, but generally the results are really bad, far worse than decent non-"AI" tooling for reverse engineering. If there are cases where it's spitting out something that looks like the real source, then almost surely the real source (or other sources that the real source plagiarized) are in the training corpus. That would explain your perception that it "works on older software".
@eniko yeah ai code looks to programmers, like hamburger helper to a Michelin star chef.
@Bogusmeatfactory @eniko The big difference is that hamburger helper is still sustinence. It's not going to suddenly delete all your data or cause you to expose 100 million people's medical records to fascists.
People who are not actual programmers who care do not understand what scary positions of power software is placed in and how utterly irresponsible it is to put vomited garbage with no engineering behind it in those places.
I dunno. I reviewed C and Java for 40 years.
Human-generated code is just as terrible as machine-generated code. Sometimes worse.
But somehow, people expect the AI to operate without a spec. Well, allow my 40 years of experience tell anyone ready to listen, fucked-up human code is far worse than the AI-generated stuff, without a spec
@tuban_muzuru @eniko developing that spec is what programming is
@tuban_muzuru @eniko I'm writing a book, I have already picked the font and numbered the pages.
Oct 18, 2026, 10:45 PM@eniko Thank you for saying this as firmly and as loudly.
Perhaps slightly a tangent, but it really makes me think about how much people need to remember that the slop side of the fight are, in general, lying liars who lie... even when something seems impressive at first glance, it's just all so much slight of hard.
@eniko
I am reminded of what HTML started to look like when people switched from writing it to using layout applications.
And I think that has to be so much worse for functional programs. At least a bad HTML page is really just bad for that one site.
Oct 19, 2026, 4:01 PM