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If AI is so good at coding - where are the open source contributions?
(pivot-to-ai.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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If humans are so good at coding, how come there are 8100000000 people and only 1500 are able to contribute to the Linux kernel?
I hypothesize that AI has average human coding skills.
The average coder is a junior, due to the explosive growth of the field (similar as in some fast-growing nations the average age is very young). Thus what is average is far below what good code is.
On top of that, good code cannot be automatically identified by algorithms. Some very good codebases might look like bad at a superficial level. For example the code base of LMDB is very diffetent from what common style guidelines suggest, but it is actually a masterpiece which is widely used. And vice versa, it is not difficult to make crappy code look pretty.
"Good code" is not well defined and your example shows this perfectly. LMDBs codebase is absolutely horrendous when your quality criterias for good code are Readability and Maintainability. But it's a perfect masterpiece if your quality criteria are Performance and Efficiency.
Most modern Software should be written with the first two in mind, but for a DBMS, the latter are way more important.
Average drunk human coding skils
Well according to microsoft mildly drunk coders work better
For today's lucky ten thousand, the Ballmer Peak:
Source: XKCD 323.