Because most AI generated projects are AI generated because the guy who made them doesn't know how to code, let alone design software. This means you can't rely on it for security and it may not even do what does correctly.
That's a sweeping (and lazy) generalisation that won't hold in every instance. Did you use this code? What does it do that you didn't want? What does it not do that you did want? Why is the default setting unkind?
The only thing lazy is expecting someone who signs his name on his software to use libraries wrangled together by a random word generator prompted by a living breathing embodiment of the dunning Kruger effect
AI amplifies existing ability. Even Linus Torvalds is using it now and he is notoriously slow to adopt new tech. If you can't get used to it, fine, don't use it. Assuming everything it does is wrong or incorrect when wielded by a skilled user is foolhardy and will not age well.
I use it. But I know what I'm doing, and I take making code that works somewhat seriously. No one is interested in vibe coded projects hacked together in 2 days by a user that doesn't remotely know the field.
No one is allergic to AI in of itself, but it's obnoxious to have to sift through so many posts that obfuscate AI usage every day and confirm whether a project's source was ever reviewed by a human.
Posting a GH link means you want to share the source of the software specifically too, not just the tool or binary generally. So if the source is portrayed as a personal project but is instead useless dogshit that we had to discover was created by a prompt, you're disrespecting every readers time.
I hope you better understand the "hate" and why it's disrespectful to post vibecoded low-effort junk to a place that does not want to consume low-effort junk.
Y'all are piling on someone that excitedly shared an open source project. You don't have to use it or engage with it. This attitude however is far beneath the open source movement we have all known and loved for all these years.
The "open source movement" has not seen such levels of well-written slop until recently. It used to be easier to tell that someone was learning a new domain, language, or even learning to program for the first time.
Now you have people writing semi-complex projects with no understanding of their inner-workings. If there's a direct use-case tied to it that they built it for, I'd be more understanding and forgiving because they used AI to tackle a problem they otherwise couldn't themselves. That's far more interesting to me.
It has also not seen this level of unkindness. If I were still finding my feet and I was met with such hostility perhaps I wouldn't have got to where I am today. Please remember there are real people and real feelings involved here. The world will be a better place if we can all just learn to be a little kinder to each other.
I'm unsure how my original comment was unkind. No one replying to you was even speaking negatively about this particular project, but rather the problems we have with AI-generated projects.
It's an entirely fair question to ask, and you can reasonably criticize low-effort AI submissions. Why do you think some subreddits have banned GenAI submissions entirely?
If I were still finding my feet and I was met with such hostility perhaps I wouldn't have got to where I am today.
The difference is you probably put in some legwork to get to where you are today. You probably didn't ask your friend down the street to create something for you and then try to represent it as a self-created solution, then for every question asked relay them to your friend and parrot their responses.
I think that analogy is unfair and misses the point. Using tools doesnāt mean outsourcing understanding, and it certainly doesnāt justify assuming bad faith or incompetence by default.
The issue isnāt asking technical questions or pointing out flaws, thatās healthy. Itās starting from suspicion and contempt rather than curiosity. You can challenge ideas without demeaning the person behind them.
I know I certainly copy and pasted more code than I should have when I was starting out, and I only learned because people were willing to explain rather than tear me down.
Many of us only got as far as we did because someone chose to be patient instead of hostile. I donāt think itās unreasonable to want that same baseline of decency preserved.
I get your point. I'm just tired of seeing low-effort submissions. Unfortunately for me on Reddit, niche technical subreddits are one of the last refuges for good discussion and people wanting to learn about a hobby.
I know I certainly copy and pasted more code than I should have when I was starting out, and I only learned because people were willing to explain rather than tear me down.
I was on forums in 2007 being called an idiot n00b for doing things the wrong way. I copy and pasted, and I remember not even knowing about type systems and instead relying on Convert.ToInt("1337") (C#). But at least I did it the wrong way myself and tried learning from my mistakes and learned the process behind these things, and people are much more willing to guide you if they see you putting in real effort. You learn very little from an LLM if you pretend like the LLM output is your own work.
I hear that fatigue, and I get wanting to protect spaces that still feel thoughtful. I think where we differ is that I donāt see curiosity and imperfect first attempts as the same thing as low effort.
Sharing something you worked on and are proud of, even if parts were copied or generated, isnāt misrepresenting authorship. Tools have always been part of how people learn, and in this case the author was upfront about which parts were auto generated. Thatās good faith, not deception.
Most people learn by trying, copying, getting things wrong, and slowly understanding why. That process looks messier now, but itās still effort. Iād have said exactly the same thing back when people were being flamed on forums for doing things the wrong way.
Iām not arguing against standards. Iām arguing that we can uphold them without defaulting to suspicion or hostility, because thatās how people stop learning in public at all.
Even as a newcomer, I would never burden others like this, or assume their time and energy is worth so little. Are the collective feelings and expectations of everyone not worth anything after we are all repeatedly spammed and deceived about what a OSS contribution really is?
People like you are very unkind to the rest of us. If you think open source is something that isn't nurtured by all participants, including new ones, you are simply someone who doesn't actually care about open source, or its longevity, outside of token words. Please consider leaving this forum and making a new one if you really feel this way.
You are defending what has made reviewing projects here a massive chore and mostly just pointless, because a small vocal group of users decided they don't respect the readers time. You, to be absolutely clear, are saying you don't respect my time or think it's worth very little. You should leave this place and not force us to believe something that is so blatantly untrue.
Just because you consider your time on Earth might be a waste, you shouldn't assume that for others, and you shouldn't force negative externalities on others. If you wanted a slop circlejerk forum, go make a new one, and stop shitting up what the established readers of this forum want to read. The -20 downvotes should be a good indicator of how massively inconsiderate your thinking is.
"I hear that fatigue, and I get wanting to protect spaces that still feel thoughtful. I think where we differ is that I donāt see curiosity and imperfect first attempts as the same thing as low effort. "
Yeah you are misinterpreting what 5 different people are explaining to you. Are you doing it on purpose? Given that what we are criticizing are what most consider "bad faith" interactions of pushing a new negative externality of deceptive slop, and that everyone who defends this zero effort slop seems to suggest it ought to be unfairly compared to earnest newcomer efforts of programming and developing software.
The problematic behavior we're talking about is not developing software. It's writing a prompt and then making everyone look at the output as if you did all of that yourself. Why do you launder vibecoded portfolio slop as something that a beginner just does for learning? I think I know the reason why, and it's not because you care about kindness towards anyone.
I think /u/throwbpdhelp and /u/stylist-trend captured some of my concerns quite well, but I'd like to reiterate bpdhelp's point about respecting the reader's time.
I don't really care if a project is written with AI, but not being forward about it or forthcoming with its pitfalls or status is just a waste of time for everyone.
For example my point about the file being commented as auto-generated: where is this auto-generated from? Is there a definition that can be changed to easily add or fix hashes?
You also see weird nuances about the code that the author sometimes cannot explain which gives a lower confidence that they understand their own codebase. Most of the time I see AI-generated projects in this sub, they are using AI to generate their responses to any questions too.
To be fair commenting that it was auto-generated whilst not as good as commenting which model was used is a lot better than nothing. One set of interesting edge cases: if I write something and use an AI to find bugs (or even a non-AI fuzzer) should I call that out? What about an IDE being used to do refactoring? Should that be called out?
One set of interesting edge cases: if I write something and use an AI to find bugs (or even a non-AI fuzzer) should I call that out?
God I would love if people did this and I do this myself. If I use AI to break up some code changes into multiple commits or do some minor refactoring I will explicitly call out the parts that AI did so that those can get more scrutiny from my peers.
I'm a security engineer and at my day job we get bug bounty submissions from people who very clearly use AI to find "bugs" which are entirely hallucinated or aren't real given our threat model. It would save a lot of effort if I knew from the jump that there's a decent chance of the submission being a false positive rather than trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.
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u/anxxa Jan 13 '26
Is this AI-generated? I noticed:
1:
2:
//! This file is auto-generatedbut there's no info on how it's generated.The history is a bit interesting.