Vim's lead maintainer has fully lost his goddamn mind

[andrewradev@hachyderm.io]

Vim's lead maintainer has fully lost his goddamn mind

[andrewradev@hachyderm.io]

This is in a PR where Shougo, another long-time contributor, communicates entirely in walls of unparseable AI slop text: https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/19413

What a pathetic state after decades of active, thoughtful work. "I asked the chatbot how to write this code", "Well, I asked my chatbot, and "he" doesn't like it". What a fucking embarrassment.

[levin@hachyderm.io]

@AndrewRadev 😢

[danielsiepmann@friendica.daniel-siepmann.de]

@AndrewRadev I didn't see this coming.

Not sure what I should think and how I should react.

[andrewradev@hachyderm.io]

@danielsiepmann You and me both

[andrewradev@hachyderm.io]

> Thank you for the detailed feedback! I've addressed all the issues:
> Thank you for the feedback! I agree that following the Vim 8+ naming convention makes sense.
> Thank you for the feedback on naming!
> Thanks for the suggestion! After thinking about this more, I believe repeat_set() / repeat_get() is the right choice:
> Thank you for the feedback. A brief clarification.

This isn't even rewriting his own thoughts in whatever bland style the chatbot can muster, it's just dumping people's comments into the bot and copy-pasting whatever it shits out.

This is The Future that boosters want: An endless bikeshedding session where agreeable chatbots trade excessively polite thank-yous and screenfuls of bullet-pointed lists. A bunch of children, getting paid to play around with tamagotchis.

What a bleak fucking future to dream of.

[normalmode@mastodon.social]

@AndrewRadev This thread is extremely surprising (and, honestly, upsetting) to me.

[andrewradev@hachyderm.io]

@normalmode There have been signs that their brains are going, but I didn't realize it had gotten this bad. E.g. the 9.2 announcement was visibly AI slop, and Christian Brabandt happily posted a "Warp AI" ad on the Vim github repo months ago: https://github.com/vim/vim/discussions/18153

But this particular PR really takes the cake, and it's only going to get worse from here on out.

[normalmode@mastodon.social]

@AndrewRadev I wasn’t aware of either of those before, but even so, this feels qualitatively different.

I had seen a couple of mentions of Claude being found in the GitHub repo over the past few days, but I didn’t expect *this*.

I’ve never followed Vim’s development that closely but from what I did see of it under Bram I would have described his approach with words like “careful” and “cautious”. I’ve been presuming the new maintainers would continue that legacy. This… doesn’t look like that.

[andrewradev@hachyderm.io]

@normalmode Yeah, interface decisions like method names etc live forever. Vim's strongest feature is how backwards-compatible it is. That's why I can have a folding plugin from 2006 installed in my config and it works perfectly 20 years later.

Running slop bots to "discuss" the API is the opposite of thoughtful. It's not like the project hasn't made bad calls about naming or types, but they have all been made with intent, at least, and people have learned from past mistakes.

At this point, I no longer feel like I can recommend anybody to update their Vim to get some new feature, since it's just as likely to contain a bunch of security issues or subtle bugs. I have already slowed my posting under @VimLinks because of stuff like this, but I think I'm fully done for the moment.

[normalmode@mastodon.social]

@AndrewRadev Yes: complete, unwavering commitment to backwards compatibility has long been one of the things I’ve most appreciated about Vim, too. It’s one of the main (legitimate) reasons I’m still not on Neovim.

[eljojo@ruby.social]

@AndrewRadev wow this PR is truly painful to read. it feels like these social networks made for AIs to talk to each other. I don’t mind AI writing code for you, but you gotta take ownership over the ideas, you can’t just point a finger and say it this or that, you gotta understand it and own it. You posted it online, under your name, not the AI’s.

[danielsiepmann@friendica.daniel-siepmann.de]

@AndrewRadev @normalmode It actually is the reason I've switched back from Neovim after years.

Now I need to reconsider mu editor, the main building block of my work and one of the biggest ones in my private life... So sad.

[kunev@blewsky.social]

@AndrewRadev@hachyderm.io I used to think how much nicer the internet in general and FOSS communities specifically would be if people were a bit warmer and nicer to each other. Acknowledging others' contributions and ideas, thanking each other for good points etc. instead of the popular attempts to outnerd each other on technicalities.

Should've been more careful about what I wish for I guess...

[theorangetheme@en.osm.town]

@AndrewRadev
@davidgerard

[sstendahl@floss.social]

@AndrewRadev Don't worry, just tell Claude “yeah, but I did this with intention” and it will respond with “oh my bad, I can totally see now, and my initial concern was wrong”.

I once tried to put my own code into Claude to see if it can find bugs or do pre-review. Some suggestions are plain wrong, other times they just don't make sense. And each time you highlight them to the LLM or tell it that you did it on purpose, it'll just says "oopsie my bad you're right".

Not that useful.

[sstendahl@floss.social]

@AndrewRadev Like I'm not religiously against LLM's at all times. Even though I do think they do more harm than good, there are situations I'm fine by them existing.

But Jesus, willingness people are to put themselves in the position of a reverse centaur is just painful. It's a complete lack of care of the craft. The fact that VIM's lead developer seems to buy into this is concerning to say the least…

[simonzerafa@infosec.exchange]

@AndrewRadev

Time to tell them to fork off? 🙂🤷‍♂️

[teohhanhui@mastodon.social]

@nihilistic_capybara @AndrewRadev https://github.com/vim/vim/pull/19413#issuecomment-4000394026

[nik@toot.teckids.org]

@AndrewRadev Is neovim better in this regard?