[cmdr2]

> This is obvious AI slop from the readme

I keep hoping that low-effort comments like these will eventually get downvoted (because it's official HN policy). I get that it's fashionable to call things AI slop, but please put some effort into reading the code and making an informed judgment.

It's really demeaning to call someone's hard work "AI slop".

What you're implying is that the quality of the work is poor. Did you actually read the code? Do you think the author didn't obsessively spend time over the code? Do you have specific examples to justify calling this sloppy? Besides a misaligned "|" symbol?

And I doubt you even read anything because the author never talked about LLMs in the first place.

My beef isn't with you personally, it's with this almost auto-generated trend of comments on HN calling everyone's work "AI slop". One might say, low-effort comments like these are arguably "AI slop", because you could've generated them using GPT-2 (or even simple if-conditionals).

[kmaitreys]

While I would not call this AI slop, the probability that LLMs were used is high.

> It's really demeaning to call someone's hard work "AI slop".

I agree. I browsed through some files and found AI-like comments in the code. The readme and several other places have AI-like writing. Regarding author not spending time on this project, this is presumably a 16k loc project that was commited in a single commit two days ago. So the author never commited any draft/dev version in the time. I find that quite hard to believe. Again my opinion is that LLMs were used, not that the code is slop. It may be. It may not be.

Yes this whole comment chain is the top comment misreading LLVM as LLMs which is hilarious.

> My beef isn't with you personally, it's with this almost auto-generated trend of comments on HN calling everyone's work "AI slop".

Now this doesn't necessarily is about this particular project but if you post something on a public forum for reactions then you are seeking the time of the people who will read and interact with it. So if they encounter something that the original author did not even bother to write, why should they read it? You're seeing many comments like that because there's just a lot of slop like that. And I think people should continue calling that out.

Again, this project specifically may or may not be slop. So here the reactions are a bit too strong.

[ZaneHam]

Hello, I’m the project author. I don’t think In any of this and some of the criticisms I’ve received on this forum have people realised I’m not the original poster. I posted this on R/compilers and as of now that’s pretty much it. In terms of the comments. I use intellisense from time to time, I put my own humour into things and because that’s who I am. I’m allowed to do these things.

I’m self taught in this field. I was posting on R/compilers and shared this around with some friends who work within this space for genuine critique. I’ve been very upfront with people on where I use LLMs. It’s actually getting a bit “too much” with the overwhelming attention.

[kmaitreys]

I understand your position. If I were in your place where someone else posted my personal (?)/hobby project on a public forum where it got discussed more on the point if it was LLM generated or not rather than the more interesting technical bits, I would also be frustrated.

Regarding the writing style, it's unfortunate that LLMs have claimed a lot of writing styles from us. My personal opinion is to avoid using these AI-isms but I completely get that for people who wrote like that from the start, it's quite annoying that their own writing is now just labelled as LLM generated content.

[jasonvorhe]

Most of the stuff I published anywhere was moved into a new git repo with a fresh commit history, often in one commit. Don't want to worry about some overeager hiring manager or client to assume my sloppy commits and git push -f use in personal projects is representative of my paid work. Seems to be quite the common practice, though I have no numbers to back this up of course.

I can empathise with the short fuse when it comes to suspecting AI slopped stuff though. Even some of the few people I still look up to push a lot of takes that reek of being slopped. Guess we'll have to wait this out.

[cmdr2]

> this is presumably a 16k loc project that was commited in a single commit two days ago. So the author never commited any draft/dev version in the time

It's quite common to work locally and publish a "finished" version (even if you use source control). The reasons can vary, but I highly doubt that Google wrote Tilt Brush in 3 commits - https://github.com/googlevr/tilt-brush

All I'm saying is assuming everyone one-shots code (and insulting them like people do on HN), is unnecessary. I'm not referring to you, but it's quite a common pattern now, counter to HN's commenting guidelines.

> found AI-like comments in the code

Sure, but respectfully, so what? Like I posted in a [separate comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47057690), code generators are like power tools. You don't call a carpenter sloppy because they use power tools to drill or cut things. A sloppy carpenter will be sloppy regardless, and a good carpenter will obsess over every detail even if they use power tools. A good carpenter doesn't need to prove their worth by screwing in every screw by hand, even if they can. :)

In some cases, code generators are like sticks of dynamite - they help blow open large blocks of the mountain in one shot, which can then be worked on and refined over time.

The basic assumption that annoys me is to assume that anyone who uses AI to generate code is incompetent and that their work is of poor quality. Because that assumes that people just one-shot the entire codebase and release it. An experienced developer will mercilessly edit code (whether written by an AI or by a human intern), and edit it until it fits the overall quality and sensibility. And large projects have tones of modules in them, it's sub-optimal to one-shot them all at once.

For e.g. with tests, I've written enough tests in my life that I don't need to type every character from scratch each time. I list the test scenarios, hit generate, and then mercilessly edit the output. The final output is exactly what I would've written anyway, but I'm done with it faster. Power tool. The final output is still my responsibility, and I obsessively review every character that's shipped in the finished product - that is my responsibility.

Sure plenty of people one-shot stuff, just like plenty of Unity games are asset flips, and plenty of YouTube videos are just low-effort slop.

But assuming everything that used AI is crap is just really tiring. Like [another commenter said](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47054951), it's about skilled hands.

> something that the original author did not even bother to write

Again, this is an assumption. If I give someone bullet points (the actual meat of the content), and someone else puts them into sentences. Did the sentences not reflect my actual content? And is the assumption that the author didn't read what was finally written, and edit it until it reflected the exact intent?

In this case, the author says they used AI to generate the ASCII art in question. How does that automatically mean that the author AI-generated the entire readme, let alone the entire project? I agree, the knee-jerk reactions are way out of proportion.

Where do you draw the line? Will you not use grammar tools now? Will you not use translation tools (to translate to another language) in order to communicate with a foreign person? Will that person argue back that "you" didn't write the text, so they won't bother to read it?

Should we stop using Doxygen for generating documentation from code (because we didn't bother with building a nice website ourselves)?

Put simply, I don't understand the sudden obsession with hammering every nail and pressing every comma by hand, whereas we're clearly okay with other tools that do that.

Should we start writing assembly code by hand now? :)

[kmaitreys]

I mostly I agree with what you said. Comparison with a google project is bad though. That's a corporate business with a lot of people that might touch that codebase. Why are you comparing that to someone's personal project?

Also I can see you and I both agree that it's disingenuous to call all LLM generated content slop. I think slop has just become a provocative buzzword at this point.

Regarding drawing the line, at the end, it comes down to the person using the tools. What others think as these tools become more and more pervasive will become irrelevant. If you as a person outsourced your thinking than it's you who will suffer.

In all my comments, I personally never used the word slop for this project but maintained that LLMs were used significantly. I still think that. Your other comparison of LLMs with things like doxygen or translation tools is puzzling to me. Also points about hammering every nail and every comma are just strawman. 5-6 years ago from today people used these things and nobody had any issues. There's a reason why people dislike LLM use though. If you cannot understand why it frustrates people, then I don't know what to say.

Also people do write assembly by hand when it is required.

[cmdr2]

> If you as a person outsourced your thinking than it's you who will suffer.

Using a code generator != outsourcing your thinking. I know that's the popular opinion, and yes, you can use it that way. But if you do that, I agree you'll suffer. It'll make sub-optimal design decisions, and produce bloated code.

But you can use code generators and still be the one doing the thinking and making the decisions in the end. And maintain dictatorial control over the final code. It just depends on how you use it.

In many ways, it's like being a tech lead. If you outsource your thinking, you won't last very long.

It's a tool, you're the one wielding it, and it takes time, skill and experience to use it effectively.

I don't really have much more to say. I just spoke up because someone who built something cool was getting beat up unnecessarily, and I've seen this happen on HN way too many times recently. I wasn't pointing fingers at you at any point, I'm glad to have had this discussion :)

[lambda]

I was responding to the person I was replying to, who confused LLVM with LLM, and who had brought up the slop term. I was surprised that they didn't think it was slop, because of the obvious tells (even with the fixed diagram formatting, there's a lot about that README and ASCII art that say that it was generated by or formatted by an LLM).

One of the reasons that slop gets such an immediate knee-jerk reaction, is that it has become so prolific online. It is really hard to read any programming message boards without someone posting something half baked, entirely generated by Claude, and asking you to spend more effort critiquing it than they ever did prompting for it.

I glanced through the code, but I will admit that the slop in the README put me off digging into it too deeply. It looked like even if it was human written, it's a very early days project.

Yeah, calling something slop is low effort. It's part of a defense mechanism against slop; it helps other folks evaluate if they want to spend the time to look at it. It's an imperfect metric, especially judging if it's slop based only on the README, but it's gotten really hard to participate in good faith in programming discussions when so many people just push stuff straight out of Claude without looking at it and then expect you to do so.