According to the release:
Adds experimental PostgreSQL support
The code was written by Cursor and Claude
14,997 added lines of code, and 10,202 lines removed
reviewed and heavily tested over 2-3 weeks
This makes me uneasy, especially as ntfy is an internet facing service. I am now looking for alternatives.
Am I overreacting or do you all share the same concern?
Ai can be powerful and destructive at the same time. (note: I didn’t use Ai to write this).
Ai coding can help a lot in accelerating software development. In the right hands that is. Meaning the software engineer still reviews the code. Test it. And takes responsibility. In those cases there is nothing wrong with using Ai for software development.
The problem is that some programmers are using AI without even looking at the end results. Just approves everything, commits, push and release. That approach is wrong and especially inexperience engineers might fail into this trap. So in this case the code has most likely a lot of duplicated code, full with bugs and other issues. Some issues you encounter it for the first time, since it wasn’t tested etc.
In the latter story, you feel the impact. And the downsides of Ai. And only see the negatives of Ai. You might say it’s Ai slop even. Or vibe coded. Which is correct.
Tldr: Ai can be very powerful in the right hands. It still requires a lot of human time and effort to get it correct. And if the engineer is too lazy then you feel the consequences. If you got an experienced software engineer that takes the responsibility of the code. Reviews it thoroughly. Test all corner cases, etc. Then AI can be powerful and helpful.
Was this written with genAI? Even the TLDR is padded fluff of common talking points
I’m halfway with you, and halfway just considering that people think it’s relevant to include a tl;dr in a barely three paragraph comment. The feeling with tl;dr for me is a summary similar to a closing paragraph, and if anyone thinks that one sentence (“Ai coding can help a lot in accelerating software development.”) is somehow worthy of being summarized as if the point was proven (“Ai can be very powerful in the right hands”)… well, it sounds like shit because it is shit. Maybe it’s ai, maybe it’s just a really rushed dude making a throwaway comment in the fediverse, and maybe it’s just a person who is confident enough in their mind that they forget they haven’t made an actually decent argument outside of their past, and concluding as if they brought that past argument forth here is eye-raising.
Considering he’s on his own instance… I’m going to bet the context is somewhere between throwaway comment and invoking past assertions without citing them.
You can run my text through Ai checkers if you wish. But it’s not Ai generated.
I’m not just on my own instance. I’m the creator of the software: Mbin. Previously known as kbin.
People need tldr today, due to TikTok. 😅
Also I can’t really answer the question if it’s bad or not what happens to ntfy.sh since it really depends on how the maintainer is using Ai here. Whether he did test the code, and read all the generated code.
Ai in itself isn’t the problem here.
Haha. I’m not a native English speaker. But it’s not Ai generated.
I try to keep it common for general people to understand it. If you have follow up questions shoot. I have 25+ years of software engineering experience.
But my point is that developers can use Ai, Ai tools become much better for coding, as long as the developer still understands the code. Since some developers don’t even bother looking at the code anymore…
Agreed. I have a sense that, eventually, development communities will figure out etiquette and policies to govern LLM usage. But how do you enforce that kind of policy? Right now, it’s essentially a judgement call by the maintainers. It’s hard to catch sneaky LLM usage.
On the other hand, I think there are objectively good ways to use LLMs for software:
Indeed also read the paper called Programming as Theory building. From 1985. Which is very relevant today again. Since people lose the connection with the code due to Ai.
One of my favorite papers! On a similar note, I recently started reading A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout. Although it’s a lot more recent (2018), I’d argue it’s required reading in light of the LLM hype craze.