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there is a AI free fork of vim, called evi (thelemmy.club)
submitted 7 months ago* by to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
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looks like an amazing project to support

https://codeberg.org/NerdNextDoor/vim

https://mastodon.social/@mrmasterkeyboard/116192873098653079

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[–] 58 points 7 months ago* (22 children)

Wait, so because vim is allowing code written with AI we are switching to a random fork? The mental gymnastics here are insane once again. Is someone assuming that the vim maintainers are gonna do agentic requests? How is this project gonna handle upstream changes into their own main? Cherry-picking only "confirmed human-only" commits? Decisions like that out of spite, with zero thoughts and just out of principle do not help against slop. You're just adding human slop to the AI slop.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago

    I'm sad I hate to scroll this far to see a sane take. Bad code is bad, AI accelerating the destruction of the planet is bad, but experienced maintainers using the tools that exist is not bad, and trying to fork a project like Vim because of that is insane. Power to them if they actively maintain it, but I don't see that in the cards.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Wait, so because vim is allowing code written with AI we are switching to a random fork? The mental gymnastics here are insane once again.

    What Lemmy community did you think you were in?

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    One where we critically discuss issues with and around AI, but it seems we're just chanting "AI bad" in a circlejerk.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    I think you want /r/aicritihype.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Is that your personal opinion, or is that the general consensus of the moderation team? Because if it's the former, I couldn't give less f's about it, if it's the latter, then you guys probably should rewrite the community description:

    "A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype."

    I'd not call something a discussion if no other or more differentiated opinion is allowed, and putting that up as a community description while reacting with a "yeah, here's the door, you kinda definitely should leave" is a fucking joke.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    My personal opinion. The "moderation team" isn't a "team" in any sense of the word. VerbFlow/Proud Cascadian just keeps appointing people mods without any consent or advance notice. And sometimes he disappears for months. I happen to be one of the first mods appointed (which I think is why my name appears so high on the list in the sidebar), but I found out I was a mod by randomly visiting my profile page one day and seeing /c/fuck_ai there. There's no forum where the mods get together to make/discuss moderation policy decisions or anything. The only rules off of which to make any moderation policy decisions are the sidebar and the pinned threads in /c/fuck_ai written by VerbFlow/Proud Cascadian, and they're... not exactly precise or comprehensive. It's hard to even really call them an enumeration of "the rules" in any sense.

    All that to say, nothing I've said in this thread is the consensus of the moderation team because there is no consensus among the moderation team. If there was a feature to let me remove my moderator badge from comments, I'd utilize it. There is an option to "speak as moderator", but I think that does... kindof the opposite of what I'd want? (Like it'd make the moderator badge bigger and meaner looking or something. I dunno.)

    If I was the sole moderator, or if I was sure the other moderators would agree with this action, I might have considered whether any particular moderation action was warranted in this case, but the moderation situation for /c/fuck_ai is... well, to call it "disorganized" would be to greatly understate. Everybody who does any moderating just kindof goes off of their own judgement in the moment, and again the "rules" (if they can even be called that) are severely lacking as anything to base any decisions off of. There are things that are clearly ban-worthy, obviously. (Obvious blatant spam, CSAM, obvious trolls of various sorts, stuff that's obviously 100% opposite of the aim of /c/fuck_ai.) But is all pro-AI sentiment disallowed in /c/fuck_ai? Speaking as someone who wants a community where that's the case, I'd love to say yes, but I didn't found the community and the one who did seems... relatively tolerant of pro-AI sentiment given some of the pinned posts. And the rest of the mod team doesn't doesn't have anywhere to weigh in on that question. So... I mean, I'm not going to be the one to start taking any sort of moderation actions to repel every hint of pro-AI sentiment without some level of assurance that I'd have the backing of the rest of the mods in doing so (even if on some level, I'd really love to just update the sidebar to make pro-AI sentiment expressly against the rules and then subsequently ban/delete all pro-AI sentiment and tell people to go create their own community for that if they want to just so I don't have to see it here. 'Cuz I don't. At all. But again, that's really just... like... my opinion, man.)

    I dunno. Maybe the mods who want to be mods (and I'm sure there are plenty of /c/fuck_ai mods who aren't really interested in modding, because they weren't asked before they were appointed) should get together and establish some way of establishing some consensus or something. I haven't really had the bandwidth in general to do anything like that, but I think it's fair to say it's sorely needed.

    Absent a feature to remove my mod badge on a per-comment basis, though, maybe I should either 1) try to initiate some effort to get the mods all on one page, 2) step down as mod, or 3) not comment in a way that might be interpreted as a statement of the consensus of the mod team. I haven't thought through which one of those if any I should do.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    All that to say, nothing I've said in this thread is the consensus of the moderation team because there is no consensus among the moderation team. If there was a feature to let me remove my moderator badge from comments, I'd utilize it. There is an option to "speak as moderator", but I think that does... kindof the opposite of what I'd want? (Like it'd make the moderator badge bigger and meaner looking or something. I dunno.)

    Absent a feature to remove my mod badge on a per-comment basis, though, maybe I should either 1) try to initiate some effort to get the mods all on one page, 2) step down as mod, or 3) not comment in a way that might be interpreted as a statement of the consensus of the mod team. I haven't thought through which one of those if any I should do.

    I did not want to call you out on the mod badge, it was a legit question. Because if this community is thought/planned to be an anti-AI sentiment only, it's fair game, and then I can just call it quits and block the community on my end, because I have zero interest in neither techbro vibe code stories nor in anything that mentions AI is bad stories.

    Sorry if the comment came out wrong - I just realized there that you were a mod, and probably misinterpreted your comment as well, since the whole comment chain before has been kinda heated too.

    But I definitely think that you guys (as in the whole moderation team, whoever that might be in the end) should most definitely set it clear whether this is anti AI only, no discussions, or a critical discussion of AI where, given the name, the majority is obviously anti AI, but critical discussion is welcomed and encouraged. Both are fine, but y'all need to bite the bullet and decide which it is, the current state is ... weird to say the least.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago

    I wonder if maintainers will start using AI coding tools more quietly, if the internet doesn’t have enough nuance to distinguish experienced people using Claude vs idiot tech Twitter using Claude.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    What mental gymnastics? I've already installed EVi on my dev VM, seems to work fine. Problem solved, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm glad to lend my public voice in support of a slop-free fork.

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  • [–] 32 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Of course it works fucking fine if it's a hard fork of a stable state.

    What mental gymnastics? The ones you're doing right now. You have not answered a single question from my comment. And what "problem" did you solve exactly? Has there been any issue that has come up because of the acceptance of AI in vim? What kind of "slop" is actually there that makes vim problematic for you?

    People vibe coding random bullshit ideas because they now can, do indeed produce slop. A bunch of highly experienced devs working on a successful project for years using tools that are at their disposal properly is not slop. You're lending your public voice to a split of the community and of the project for made up bullshit reasons based on no objective proof but claims of slop and out of principle.

    I'd trust the original vim maintainers to decide what's a good or bad pull, instead of a bunch of random people who simply hard forked for literally no reason.

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  • [+] -16 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    You don't get to tell other people how to do their activism. THAT's bullshit. And you don't get to tell other people what is or is not slop. I don't use projects with LLM-coded contributions, which I definitely do call slop, if I can help it. This was an easy problem to solve: compile an AI-free fork, alias vim=evi, and boom done.

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  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago

    I've never told anyone how to do their activism, I've criticized the consequences of said activism, which I still haven't got answered, and the lack of objective arguments for this specific instance of activism, which I still haven't heard, except for "AI bad lol".

    I've been rolling with the definition of slop that's kinda universally agreed on, that is low quality, spammy AI generated content, and I'd ask again for an example of that in vim, but since your definition is "LLM used = slop", I don't need to do that here I guess. Also, you've missed the irony of telling me to not tell people what slop is, while telling me what slop is right after.

    I don't understand how you can be so dense to call that an easy problem that's just boom done. It's not about compiling and aliasing it, you can do that on probably any commit of vim. It's about the maintenance and longevity of the fork, who's gonna support it, and will it have a proper level of maintenance that will make it productively usable in the long term? It's been forked to a "pre-AI" state of vim, how is it known that it's not having LLM generated (as in LLM assisted) content already, before the official guidelines have mentioned that? If all that makes evi stand out is a strict no-ai policy, how is this gonna be checked and enforced (e.g human developer uses LLM tooling on his local machine, without disclosing it)? Who are the developers behind it, greetings from xz and similar supply chain attacks? How are upstream changes and fixes handled, since you'll use it at some point with elevated privileges or to edit sensitive files? But yeah, fuck all of that, it compiles and you can just alias it, right, so we can talk about the severe problems in the open issues - will vim script be renamed too, and we need to rename vimrc to evirc asap, and boom done.

    I've said it here at some point already, screeching "AI IS BAD REEEE" is not helping the case, it's discrediting the "movement" or "activism" as a whole. AI will not leave. When the bubble bursts, people will stop shoving it everywhere, but it will stay where it can be used properly. Software engineering is something where it CAN be used properly, since whatever you're building doesn't give a flying fuck about who's been writing the code. It's either good, or it's bad. Instead of worthless decisions on principle, do better. Coach and talk with people on how to do better, how to live in a world with AI responsibly and for good. Avoid, boycott and fork the ones deciding to not do that, based on objective reasons, and build it better. That's what activism is about, using your actions to lead to change for the better, or isn't it? And I don't see how a hard fork, with all the mentioned consequences and problems, for the simple reason of vim maintainers saying "disclose AI usage" is leading to anything better just for the reason of shoveling an antislop and no-ai tag into the codeberg repository.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    slop-free fork

    Based on what, exactly? I work with real people who write very sloppy code. If you're trying to make a statement by switching away from vim, why not go to emacs, nano, or sublime?

    The mental gymnastics is trusting a completely unknown person more than an LLM. LLMs are about as trustworthy and competent as the average person. In my book, that puts them far below reputable developers (like Moolenaar), but far above complete randos like the EVi dev. At least the LLM is somewhat predictable, but people can be crazy.

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  • [–] -4 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Wow, that's quite an accusation against the lead maintainer of EVi, and furthermore you seem to be in the wrong forum because this one is called Fuck AI. So last I checked it's perfectly alright to say fuck AI and also fuck the LLMs you've placed such unwarranted confidence in.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    "maintainer" lol hold on lemme fork vim so I can become a maintainer as well.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I'm not sure what you're lol'ing about. This is literally how open source software works. People can fork projects if they don't like something about how the project is run.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    I'm accusing them of... not being someone I'm familiar with? Someone I don't implicitly trust? If that's all, the same applies to pretty much everyone else on the internet, including you.

    Fuck AI, and fuck LLMs. Does that help?

    But also: fuck scammers, hackers, and thieves. I don't know the EVi dev and have no reason to trust them.

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