For context, Haven is a fairly new open source (GPLv3) SSH client for Android.
At first when I saw this I was eager to explore it: there isn’t much choice in terms of open source SSH clients for Android. Termius is proprietary, ConnectBot is unmaintained (but recently has had some new activity?) and JuiceSSH was never open source afaik. Currently I am using Termux + openssh but that’s not great either (e.g. no FIDO ssh key support).
However upon further inspection I am a little suspicious that AI is used significantly for a few reasons:
- Claude has contributed a few commits (but not many)
- Some of the markdown files (like VISION.md) read like AI generated text
- The way the author replies to issues and PRs also reads like AI generated text, with heavy use of em dashes and bold text unnecessarily
- The rate of commits and new features seems rather high for a single person working by themselves
Are my suspicions founded? Even if the author uses AI to generate documentation and reply to issues, I’m not sure about the actual code itself. SSH access is quite a sensitive thing so I’d like to know whether the client I am using is built with AI or not. Would appreciate your thoughts.
If I see a single commit with Claude or a single .MD file with instructions for AI I assume it’s vibe coded right away
I say probably yes, but regardless I wouldn’t trust such a young project with only one contributor with my ssh connection.
Its like every commit is pushed directly to main triggering a new version. I wouldn’t trust that release cycle ever. Its just over a week old and is already on v3.
why does that matter? does it work? if yes, who cares, if not, there are many software built only by humans that also don’t work.
If it works but has a load of security vulnerabilities. I still wouldn’t recommend using it.
Not saying that’s the case here. But who cares is not the right awnser imo
i know a lot of software that’s built by hand where that applies, hell, bitwarden had security vulnerabilities very recently and it’s a software that’s highly regarded as trustworthy.
i ask who cares because the question is not wether the software is good, bad, etc, it’s about something that’s irrelevant to the quality of it.
A big problem is that vibe-coded stuff tends to be much harder to maintain as the ‘author’ diesn’t actually know how it works, and the code was not built for humans to understand. That’s not a problem that’s unique to LLM generated code, but it is common place in code that is, so “was this generated by LLM/AI” becomes a useful proxy question for “is thus codebase likely to be harder to maintain, and thus be less likely to be maintained well?”
There’s also the sociatal level costs of using these models to consider. At present, they use significant amounts of power and cooling, both of which lead to adverse environmental effects. It serms quite appropriate to ask if a project using them, and to make the choice to avoid those that are, out of principal as well as technical concern.
You can audit the code but something like:
The rate of commits and new features seems rather high for a single person working by themselves
Is a huge problem in itself IMO. It implies there’s no real human oversight of the project.
and that’s a fair criticism, but it doesnt have anything to do with ai or not, but bad knowledge about engineering or coding. i have a family member who has been working as a developer for 20 years, he is now using ai to automate that process, he knows what to tell the machine, he oversees the project, etc, that’s the way it’s going to be from now on, and it’s something that has happened to other industries years before. i’ve worked as an interpreter, translator and proof reader. do you think i do all by hand? no one does that anymore and i dont see people complaining about translations being “machine written” or whatever. i am doing the work, i check errors, i change, words, etc, the only thing i dont do is literally have to type 500 times words i know the translation of.
Maybe people don’t care but some do. I am sure I am not alone in caring. I believe every user should have the right to know what is running on their system and where it came from. What they choose to do with that information is up to them.
sure, but just because a lot of people or whatever think that way doesnt mean anything. you already have that right, there is the code, you can read it… what do you mean you cannot know what’s running in your system? now, where it came from? i dont know about that, i think developers have a right to their privacy and don’t have to tell you where they live.
Not everyone can read code.
From those who can, not all have the same knowledge that may be required to read this specific tool.
From those who can, not all have the time or willingness to do so.
Not wanting to use something that had AI input is just as valid as not wanting to use a specific tool, programming language, operative system, or browser, because it goes against your principles.
Software always had bugs long before vibe coding was a thing, we all understand that.
Many of us are on Lemmy because we don’t want to contribute to Reddit.
OP is not trying to convince you to not use tools that AI never contributed to, no need to try to convince him to use tools that AI may have potentially heavily contributed to.
i never said anyone can read code, but saying you dont have that right is wrong, you have it… and i never tried to convince op to use software with ai code on it, what i did was question about why they don’t want it. why would anyone not want a specific programming language? electron is a mess, okay, that’s a reason, but i dont think there’s people who despise, i dunno, python because of no reason whatsoever
I personally would rather avoid things using precisely electron as you mentioned (yes I know that’s not a language) or javascript as a backend programming language.
But even if you and I can’t think of a reason why would someone not want a specific programming language, who are we to deny them the right not to use things written in such language?
what i did was question about why they don’t want it
Your comments in this thread I read before posting my message seemed a bit aggressive towards the OP but I maybe I misunderstood them. My bad, I’m sorry.
JuiceSSH is pretty solid
Isn’t this proprietary?
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