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Devs Wrote Slop Code Long Before AI Did
CodeQuality Post #7822 · source on Telegram

Devs Wrote Slop Code Long Before AI Did

Description

A screenshot of a tweet from Arvid Kahl (@arvidkahl), a well-known indie hacker and bootstrapping author, shown with his verified profile photo on the left and a black 'Subscribe' button in the top right. The tweet text, in large black type on a white background, reads: 'Devs are acting like they didn't write slop code before AI.' The post skewers the current discourse around 'AI slop' in codebases by pointing out that low-quality, copy-pasted, barely-reviewed code predates LLM coding assistants - developers have always shipped slop; AI just industrialized it. It lands as a critique of selective memory in the AI code-quality debate

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Comments

19
Anonymous ★ Top Pick AI didn't lower the bar for code quality - it just automated the part where we blamed the previous developer
  1. Anonymous ★ Top Pick

    AI didn't lower the bar for code quality - it just automated the part where we blamed the previous developer

  2. Anonymous

    AI didn't invent slop; it gave it a higher tokens-per-second budget.

  3. @Sandwic_H 7mo

    That's basically the reason why AI does this that much.

  4. @kvassilisk 7mo

    Well the only difference is now it's not me getting paid for the slop

  5. @nwordtech 7mo

    Do not confuse my divine shitcode with measly ai slop

  6. @razordude 7mo

    Yeah, we used to call them "Indian developer"

    1. @deimossos 7mo

      ai - actual Indian

      1. @AmindaEU 6mo

        I thought it changed to African Intelligence

  7. @razordude 7mo

    😁 In that case, AI slop has been the norm for decades 😁

  8. @RiedleroD 6mo

    shitty coders are the nr.1 thing I complained about in IT before LLMs got big. do not mistake my disdain for AI as approval for organic shitcoders

    1. @RiedleroD 6mo

      sometimes it feels like I'm the only quality-focused webdev in the whole industry

      1. @lambda_coolusername 6mo

        the Elm people seem to care at least a little

        1. @RiedleroD 6mo

          elm?

          1. @lambda_coolusername 6mo

            elm!

            1. @RiedleroD 6mo

              "No Runtime Exceptions" sounds like a bad idea

              1. @deadgnom32 6mo

                nope. fine idea depending on requirements. some systems better die than deliver wrong result. some systems better stay alive and just do nothing when behavior is of unexpected class.

                1. @death_by_oom 6mo

                  You can build a fault tolerant system in a language using exceptions and a system that doesn't tolerate faults in a language that uses errors as values or type system errors

            2. @b7sum 6mo

              haha jiggly logo

  9. @azizhakberdiev 6mo

    people learn from their mistakes AI learns people's mistakes

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