Andy Yen, the CEO of Proton, had a message for an employee in the company’s security Slack channel who urged the company to at least take a few days to pentest newly written code before pushing it live. “That’s bullshit and loser thinking. Of course it’s possible to be fast and secure,” Yen wrote in the channel at the end of August. “Stop thinking always of how to be slower, and focus more on how to be faster.”
In a follow-up message, Yen reiterated his point: “only losers think like that.” His ultimate message for the team was to “stop lovingly handcrafting all our code and use AI more.”
Personally I am okay with code being written by AI as long as it is properly being checked and tested. The CEO is a prime example of management becoming a security and safety risk, which all engineers know is very dangerous. It is the same story as what caused the Challenger disaster.
I have a 2 year ProtonVPN Plus subscription so there is not really a point in canceling it right now, but if this situation doesn’t change by the end of those 2 years I’m inclined to not renew it.
That CEO needs to step down, not just for their reputation but for the safety of their software.
Your first sentence is basically impossible. When reviewing code, your insight is always inferior to the person who wrote it. Often my code reviews consist of questioning the programmer on why they’ve done what they have, because I need their perspective as well.
You can’t do that with an LLM because it doesn’t really know why it did things.
And testing properly…? Nobody does that. LLM or human.
I was warming up to this. It certainly is better than vibe coding, but I’ve started to see libraries [with this ai policy] push out bigger releases faster with bad ergonomics and unnecessary, undocumented breaking changes, because the ai quietly migrated the internal tests/examples.
Clearly, they’re reviewing large amounts with an eye on new features and they’re not thinking through ergonomics: spending time with it, writing it themselves, and seeing where the sticking points are.
Maybe if you’re using ai for the migration, then-- problem avoided, for now. As time goes on I could see it compounding and becoming a tangled mess that’s not only inaccessible to humans, but requires more and more compute to navigate than thoughtful, handcrafted code.
Personally I am okay with code being written by AI as long as it is properly being checked and tested.
I disagree.
The CEO is a prime example of management becoming a security and safety risk, which all engineers know is very dangerous. It is the same story as what caused the Challenger disaster.
I agree.
That CEO needs to step down, not just for their reputation but for the safety of their software.
This is the quoted article: https://www.404media.co/manifestos-fear-and-loser-thinking-inside-protons-ai-reckoning/
Personally I am okay with code being written by AI as long as it is properly being checked and tested. The CEO is a prime example of management becoming a security and safety risk, which all engineers know is very dangerous. It is the same story as what caused the Challenger disaster.
I have a 2 year ProtonVPN Plus subscription so there is not really a point in canceling it right now, but if this situation doesn’t change by the end of those 2 years I’m inclined to not renew it.
That CEO needs to step down, not just for their reputation but for the safety of their software.
Your first sentence is basically impossible. When reviewing code, your insight is always inferior to the person who wrote it. Often my code reviews consist of questioning the programmer on why they’ve done what they have, because I need their perspective as well.
You can’t do that with an LLM because it doesn’t really know why it did things.
And testing properly…? Nobody does that. LLM or human.
I disagree with this. Just reviewing the code is exactly what I mean by “properly being checked and tested”.
There are people/companies that just vibe code the hell out of their stuff without any review whatsoever. That’s not something I want to touch.
I was warming up to this. It certainly is better than vibe coding, but I’ve started to see libraries [with this ai policy] push out bigger releases faster with bad ergonomics and unnecessary, undocumented breaking changes, because the ai quietly migrated the internal tests/examples.
Clearly, they’re reviewing large amounts with an eye on new features and they’re not thinking through ergonomics: spending time with it, writing it themselves, and seeing where the sticking points are.
Maybe if you’re using ai for the migration, then-- problem avoided, for now. As time goes on I could see it compounding and becoming a tangled mess that’s not only inaccessible to humans, but requires more and more compute to navigate than thoughtful, handcrafted code.
I disagree.
I agree.
I agree.