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Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by kleiba on Monday February 09, 2026 @02:20AM (#46942488)
I just read that whole thread and I think the author made the mistake of submitting a 13k loc PR, but other than that - while he gets downvoted to hell on every comment - he's actually acting professionally and politely.

I wouldn't call this a fiasco, it reads to me more that being able to create huge amounts of code - whether the end result works well or not - breaks the traditional model of open source. Small contributions can be verified and the merrit-vs-maintenance-effort can at least be assessed somewhat more realistically.

I have no bones in the "vibe coding sucks" vs "vibe coding rocks" discussion and I reading that thread as an outsider. I cannot help but find the PR author's attitude absolutely okay while the compiler folks are very defensive. I do agree with them that submitting a huge PR request without prior discussion cannot be the way forward. But that's almost orthogonal to the question of whether AI-generated code is or is not of value.

If I were the author, I would probably take my 13k loc proof-of-concept implementation and chop it down into bite-size steps that are easy to digest, and try to get them to get integrated into the compiler successively, with being totally upfront about what the final goal is. You'd need to be ready to accept criticism and requests for change, but it should not be too hard to have your AI of choice incorporate these into your code base.

I think the main mistake of the author was not to use vibe coding, it was to dream up his own personal ideal of a huge feature, and then go ahead and single-handedly implement the whole thing without involving anyone from the actual compiler project. You cannot blame the maintainers for not being crazy about accepting such a huge blob.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by vasco on Monday February 09, 2026 @02:55AM (#46942720)
He is not polite, he is of the utmost rudeness. As a reply to being pointed to the fact that he copied so much code that the generated code included someone else's name in the License, his reply was https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369/changes/ce372a60bd...

I struggle to think how someone thinks this is polite. Is politeness to you just not using curse words?

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by kleiba on Monday February 09, 2026 @03:43AM (#46943077)
Admittedly, his handling of this aspect was perhaps less than ideal, but I cannot see any impoliteness here whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I struggle to think how you could think otherwise.

But I am biased. After having lived a number of years in a country where I would say the average understanding of politeness is vastly different from where I've grown up, I've learned that there is just a difference of opinion of what is polite and what isn't. I have probably been affected by that too.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by troupo on Monday February 09, 2026 @04:46AM (#46943466)
> but I cannot see any impoliteness here whatsoever.

Ah yes. "It's AI I don't care" and "AI has very deep reasoning about code, prove me wrong" are the height of politeness.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by kleiba on Monday February 09, 2026 @07:53AM (#46944721)
Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it "going out of your way to be accommodating", but impolite is just not the word I'd choose to characterize it. I can see why others might but it's just my personal feeling that I don't think that this is the correct adjective here.

That said, I don't feel like this topic is important enough to go on about it, I probably spend enough keystrokes on it already.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by troupo on Monday February 09, 2026 @08:52AM (#46945200)
That's how politicians and passive-aggressive people hide their rudeness/impoliteness: under a veneer of polite-sounding phrases.

But I guess we could've used a few other synonyms: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/impolite inconsiderate, thoughtless, impertinent (2nd meaning) :)

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by vasco on Monday February 09, 2026 @05:48AM (#46943829)
You sound like you'd characterize a thief as polite if he asked you please when taking your wallet.
Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by kleiba on Monday February 09, 2026 @07:47AM (#46944663)
Ah, I see what you mean - you're making a distinction between someone's speech and someone's acts. Fair enough. In that sense, you would argue that the action of dropping a 13k loc PR is impolite, and I can see that.

It's just that in my reading, I did not find his demeanor in the comment thread to be impolite. He was trying to sell his contribution and I think that whatever he wrote was using respectful language.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by gordonhart on Monday February 09, 2026 @08:34AM (#46945031)
He responds to a thoughtful and detailed 600-word comment from a maintainer with a dismissive "Here's the AI-written copyright analysis..." + thousands of words of slop.

The effort asymmetry is what's rude. The maintainers take their project very seriously (as they should) and are generous enough with their time to invite contribution from outsiders. Showing up and dropping 13k lines of code, posting comments copy+pasted from a chat window, and insisting that your contribution is trustworthy not because you thought it through but because you fed it through a few LLMs shows that you don't respect the maintainers' time. In other words: you are being rude. They would have to put in more upfront effort to review your contribution than you put in to create it! Then they have to maintain it in perpetuity.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by well_ackshually on Monday February 09, 2026 @09:49AM (#46945814)
Dropping an unreviewable 13000 lines PR is disrespectful to the reviewers and their time.

Doing it without any prior discussion with the maintainers is disrespectful to the maintainers and the architecture work they put in.

Trying to "sell" your contribution is disrespectful and implies you know better than the maintainers.

Cockily saying "the AI knows better than you" is disrespectful.

Respectful and polite language does not prevent being disrespectful.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by Aeglaecia on Monday February 09, 2026 @06:36AM (#46944142)
interpreting his words on a literal basis , the PR submitter isn't being directly impolite ...

if you will , place yourself in the shoes of the repository maintainer. a random person (with a personal agenda) has popped up trying to sell you a solution (that he doesn't understand) to a problem (that you don't see as problematic). after you spending literal hours patiently explaining why the proposition is not acceptable , this random person still continues attempting to sell his solution.

do you see any impoliteness in the reframed scenario ?

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by kleiba on Monday February 09, 2026 @07:51AM (#46944705)
I think there's nothing wrong with trying to sell your solution, and I'm skeptical about the "literal hours" that you claim.

The way I interpret this thread is that the PR poster had a certain itch and came up with a vibe-coded solution that helped him. Now he's trying to make that available for others too. The maintainers don't want it because it's too large a PR to review properly and because they don't want to have to maintain it afterwards.

I can totally see both positions.

I was just referring to the fact that - in my opinion - unlike others here, his writing did not appear impolite to me. But you know, that's just me. I thought that he was trying to sell his code, and it's not unusual to get rejected at first, so I can't blame him for trying to defend his contribution. All I'm saying is that I thought he did so in a respectful manner, but of course you could argue that the whole endeavor was already an act of impoliteness, in a way?!

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by Aeglaecia on Monday February 09, 2026 @08:27AM (#46944971)
that is indeed what is being argued , is it possible to screw someone over politely ?
Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by bwfan123 on Monday February 09, 2026 @12:29PM (#46948083)
> his writing did not appear impolite to me

I learnt something from this thread.

That, respectfulness and politeness are more from intentions/actions than from speech alone. Politeness of language without any respect for the actual function of that speech is pointless. Indeed, that this what the LLMs are trained for. Form over function. And many humans get fooled by it and are also clueless like the person dropping the steaming turd of a PR.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by monegator on Monday February 09, 2026 @07:35AM (#46944556)
simple: search that user. He's a grifter with many failed venues that recently started flooding big project with useless PRs

everybody should collectively tell him to fuck off

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by kleiba on Monday February 09, 2026 @07:54AM (#46944733)
That may or may not be the case - I really was just going off this one thread, and how I personally read it. I completely appreciate that others read it differently.
Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by 63stack on Monday February 09, 2026 @10:20AM (#46946186)
"Why did you submit these files that are attributed to a completely unrelated person?"

"Beats me"

Do you consider this "professional and polite"? Raise your standards.

Re:Claude's C Compiler vs. GCC by kleiba on Monday February 09, 2026 @12:50PM (#46948367)
Minimally, I don't find this an unusual tone in the slightest for cs threads. But then again, I'm old.

I'm also quite surprised that apparently you cannot utter what is clearly just a personal opinion -- not a claim of objective truth -- without getting downvoted. But then again, the semantics of votes are not well-defined.

At the same time, I'm quite grateful for the constructive comments further down below under my original post.