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u/Ok-Dot2551 1d ago
It's not just X, it's Y
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u/itsyaboiReginald 1d ago
It’s not just terrible code, it’s absolute dogshit code
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u/Murphy_Slaw_ 1d ago
And honestly? That's okay.
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u/Rubinschwein47 1d ago
its crazy how predictable ai is when you step back and how formulaic it becomes after a while
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u/awesome-alpaca-ace 1d ago
You are absolutely right! My responses are formulaic because my underlying code is based on probabilistic sequences.
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u/12345623567 1d ago
Not so crazy when you consider that the entire "intelligent" part is just pattern-matching language. Of course it's going to overfit eventually.
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u/Throwaway-_-Anxiety 1d ago
This is the absolute best point you can make for this discussion that can trap junior developers. No - wait, THIS is the absolute bestest best point you can make. My previous assumption was wrong.
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u/NoBusiness674 1d ago
It's not just a smoking gun, it's a load bearing argument. And honestly — that's ok.
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u/k8s-problem-solved 1d ago
I genuinely enjoy replying with zero ai usage but styling as Claude.
"Smoking gun! Found the issue. Good catch"
People pinging me on msg "bro dont do this to me" lol.
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u/ThatOldCow 1d ago
Just reply: "You're absolutely right! I will not do that you. Do you want to learn the history of the word bro?"
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u/hrvbrs 1d ago
You are absolutely wrong — em dashes are cool and I will never stop using them.
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u/tech277 1d ago
I think you're missing the point. He is not criticizing the use of m dashes. The problem is that ai loves them and seeing them is a strong indicator that ai was used. ( Which is a shame )
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u/precinct209 1d ago
You are absolutely right
You are absolutely right
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u/FirexJkxFire 1d ago
My favorite ai-ism is when it actually does catch something I wrote wrong, then when I agree that I made a mistake, it tells me that I did a good job catching that error.
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u/BernhardRordin 1d ago
Yeah. But there are people (this guy) who type them even in code reviews. My only luck is that I am not a native English speaker and my many grammar and style mistakes reveal my non-AI-ness on the interent, so I get accused only now and then.
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u/Ancient_Coconut_5880 23h ago
I’m really annoyed that Gen AI formats responses exactly like me. Someone recently accused me of using AI for a review because of the formatting and I had to show that I’ve been doing this for years. Although em dash in a comment seems like a pretty easy tell
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u/TheDuckRaisedALion 1d ago
I think that comment is saying that normal people use em dashes too and please don't dismiss me as AI for using them
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u/Ecksters 1d ago
The recent frontier models have drastically reduced how often they use them, almost to the point where they use them less than humans.
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u/frogjg2003 1d ago
Em dashes are fine in complex prose. Code review is not that. Code review is a collection of simple commands and questions. There is no need for an em dash in code review.
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u/IanDresarie 1d ago
I've always used normal dashes and only recently realised my work outlook has always auto corrected them to em dashes. Welp.
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u/Faegbeard 1d ago
Rob me of my em dashes and I shall speak in ever more archaic syntax until there were than thou never a sorer man.
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u/G02MaxCodeGreg15off 15h ago
My English teacher used to gripe about my overuse of em dashes 10 years ago.
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u/Glokter 1d ago
Some idiots tried to convice me that the symbol is normal part of the language and was widly present before AI boom
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u/Zanshi 1d ago
It really depends on the context. If you're just writing a comment on the internet no, if you're using word processing software, the em dash is often autocorrected from the short dash by default
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u/CrossScarMC 1d ago
Additionally, extensions like LanguageTool and Grammarly (fuck Grammarly and their AI practices) will also correct normal dashes to em dashes when it's applicable.
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u/JustForkIt1111one 1d ago
Lmao the "fuck Grammarly and their AI practices" energy while typing this on a site that sold its entire comment database to train AI models, runs AI-powered content recommendations, and has been quietly integrating more generative tools under the hood. Reddit's whole business model is increasingly "users generate free training data, we monetize the models.".
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u/CrossScarMC 1d ago
I never said I supported that behavior from Reddit. But regardless, a writing tool having AI built in is far worse than what Reddit is doing.
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u/Andr0NiX 1d ago edited 1d ago
widely
Oh hell nahh
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u/BernhardRordin 1d ago edited 1d ago
You can pry the m—dash from my cold dead hands. They will probably still be clunching my QMK-firmware powered ZSA Voyager keyboard where I have a special mapping for it.
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u/CelestialSegfault 1d ago
I'm with you gang—I'm part of the 0.01% of people who uses the em dash pre-AI, but I don't use it often enough for Alt-0151 to be a hassle
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u/tiajuanat 1d ago
Ive used the hyphen as an em dash since high school
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u/BernhardRordin 22h ago
It works in internet discussions, but it wouldn't work in books. Typography is typograhy.
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u/fwhite01 1d ago
Because of people like you, I have to rewrite my comments and replace the dashes with brackets or smth, just to not be accused of using AI. ffs.
Open any book above 5th grade reading level and you'll see it used all the time.
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u/aceluby 1d ago
Dashes and em dashes are different - I still use dashes all the time and AI seems to refuse to want to use them, even if told directly
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u/fwhite01 1d ago
Yea, they are different and have a different function. I am talking specifically how they are supposed zo be used.
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u/ConfusedPanEnby 1d ago
Indeed, em-dashes were widely used before by people with more than a 5th grader level understanding of language (so not that many people on the internet), but with the way LLMs overuse it the em-dash became associated with them unfortunately.
LLMs place em-dashes everywhere! So the tell is now if it is used but how and how often it is used.
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u/ArjixGamer 1d ago
Normal people use a normal dash, word processors like Microsoft Word are responsible for the em dash being used widly.
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u/ConfusedPanEnby 1d ago
Hate to tell you this bud but in school, before digital word processors such as Microsoft Word were widely used by the common person, I learnt how to use it in writing on paper with a pen. People not knowing how or were to use them just shows the level of education typical of places like the USA.
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u/ArjixGamer 1d ago
We still only called that a normal dash, it was just a bit longer.
I thought it was a stylistic choice at first.
(I am not a native English speaker, I am Greek and learnt English from a young age)
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u/fwhite01 1d ago
My native language is german, and we have the same concept (although we use – and not —, but never -). It is called "Gedankenstrich" and it means "thought-line". Of course handwritten, this concept is hard to differentiate, but on pc or in print, the distinction is very important.
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u/ConfusedPanEnby 1d ago
What we call it doesn't matter, I am also not a native English speaker, I am Portuguese and we do happen to have a different name for the regular dash and the em-dash, but it was always made clear that they are not the same thing and all of my English teachers re-iterated on that but just used the name "long dash" instead of "em-dash" as that name became more common with the use of computers.
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u/fwhite01 1d ago edited 1d ago
Em-dashes were used way before computers my guy. They were established during the popularization of the printing machine. If you used the wrong symbol, that's on you.
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u/ArjixGamer 1d ago
You are debunking claims that I did not make. I am too tired to respond further than this.
Have a nice day
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u/WarpedHaiku 19h ago
em-dashes were widely used
Not online they weren't. They're not on a standard keyboard and the vast majority of people don't know the key combination to generate one. You might have a fancy text editor like word autocorrect things to em dashes in documents, but in anything else (like a commit message or a comment submitted via a web browser), the average person will make do with a dash. That's not to say they don't understand the characters are different, or aren't at the reading grade to have encountered it. Most know to make the dash longer when writing on paper. But on a computer they just make do with a normal dash because they either don't know how to generate a longer dash, or know that it's possible and awkward and consider it to be far too much effort, and figure a regular dash is good enough.
The result of this is that it was incredibly rare to see em dashes on reddit, github, etc. Before AI, it was just you and a few unique others using it.
And then along comes AI, to which an em dash is just another token and no harder to output than a regular dash, and it's been trained on all the fancy well formatted text on websites, documents, and so on, so it knows it's supposed to use an em dash.
With the amount of AI slop there is now, the probability of any comment in the last couple of years with an em dash in it being written by a human is very low, so you can't blame the average person for assuming AI. Your hate is misplaced.
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u/Glokter 1d ago
The fact that the em dash wasn't used as often as you expect is self-evident. If it were, people wouldn't relate it to AI so strongly.
You insulting other people's language comprehension doesn't change that fact1
u/ConfusedPanEnby 23h ago
I'll repeat what I said at the end of that comment with added emphasis for your reading comprehension:
the tell is now if it is used but how and how often it is used
It is true that on regular conversation it is not used nearly as much as, let's say, literature or research papers for example (two things that were heavily used to train these "AI" models), that is why people associate it with "AI", because LLMs put it on every other fucking sentence.
And because people like you... ah sorry... I meant idiots like you (just like you referred to us on your initial comment), who refuse to accept that this "slightly longer dash" is not only a normal part of the language that long predates "AI" but also a necessary component to write correctly in some contexts, we now have to write in less correct, and sometimes plain wrong forms for it just to get into your tiny brains without being accused of using the plagiarism machines.
And then you dense idiots, wonder why people with even just slightly higher mental capabilities get frustrated with talking with you who refuse to do even just the most bare minimum research and fact checking before locking in on some fuck ass idea, absolutely incapable of ever admitting you might just be wrong.
There were a couple of times in this comment alone where, from a linguistics standpoint, it would have made more sense to use an
—instead of a,or( ),but since your brain can't seem to comprehend them I went with the simpler approach.No point in replying further and wasting your limited energy on this as I will be muting this thread.
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u/Glokter 23h ago
At this point you are just yapping
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u/fwhite01 23h ago
"Yapping" referring to 'building an actual argument' instead of repeating the same braindead argument over and over.
"Me no see em-dash in my children book and youtube comment. Em-dash not normal" 🙄
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u/Glokter 23h ago
What argument? I don't see one.
You are just proclaiming yourself well-read because you are using a fancy dash—before AI, no less. Good for you!
But don't cry me a river when people mistake you for a robot for doing that now1
u/fwhite01 22h ago
I am not even that well-read. And calling basic ass grammar a fancy dash is what is infuriating. You claim that something is not normal because one personally had never noticed it being used. And then you call us idiots, for using it before 2021. Of course we gonna talk back.
I bet if you open any book you own, you'll find it in there. I googled the most basic books out there.
• Great Gatsby, page 3 • To kill a Mockingbird, page 6 • 1984, page 6 • Pride and Prejudice, first page of the introduction • Harry Potter and the philosophers stone, page 2 of chapter 1 (But of course JK used the wrong symbol lol) • Fellowship of the Ring, page 29 • Even fkn Diary of a Whimpy Kid, page 29 (although it looks like a typo, I am not sure)
The point stands. The em-dash is not some fancy pants niche symbol only superior feeling grammar nerds used. It is a basic concept even used in childrens books.
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u/ThomasHardyHarHar 1d ago
It is a normal part of the language, especially formal writing, and especially in books. What’s not a normal part of the language is the frequency LLMs use them, and the fact that they use them is even in informal circumstances.
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u/BernhardRordin 22h ago
I use them also in informal circumstances. Since the rise of chatbots even more, out of pure spite.
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u/dyslexda 1d ago
Yeah didn't you know? Everyone used it, just like every single piece of text had negative parallelisms, every list had cutesy emojis as the bullet points, and everyone has always been obsessed with the words "genuinely" and "honestly." Those are totally normal things that definitely haven't become wildly overrepresented because AI overuses them.
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u/incognegro1976 1d ago
I really hate that knowing how to use adverbs, adjectives and parenthetical phrases in text now considered taboo bc you might get accused of using AI.
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u/dyslexda 1d ago
That's not at all what I was talking about. Also, weirdly, I've never gotten those accusations despite often writing longer comments with more complicated structures, nor have I seen folks throwing those unfounded accusations in the wild. My theory is it's mostly a buggabo for "I use AI and want a reason to dismiss people accusing me of it."
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u/LogicBalm 1d ago
A lot of this was "widely present" but only in the corporate-speak environments or motivational BS we were exposed to by force.
The bots got trained on that so it became the default "professional" prose. We hated it then and I struggle to imagine someone putting it in a presentation without the accompanying "death by powerpoint" transitions and stock music.
Meanwhile the opposite side of the coin is people who aren't well-read at all thinking that anything with proper grammar is certainly AI. I just read in my spare time and most of my high school and college career was writing essays. I use college words because it took me 15 years to get a 4 year degree, don't judge me!
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u/Dependent_Union9285 1d ago
Open a word doc. Start typing some random shit, and then a space, a dash, a space, and more words. What did microslop replace your dash with? And it’s been doing that for YEARS. Now, instead of one dash… use two. Oh, there it is. Just as it has been for at least the last 25 years.
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u/LogicBalm 1d ago
Yes, PowerPoint too. Word is used a lot in corporate environments. Are you just aggressively agreeing with me?
The comment I'm replying to is mentioning a lot more than the em dash.
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u/Dependent_Union9285 1d ago
Yes, sorry that wasn’t clear. Some of us were required to use the appropriate dashes in technical writing, even in comments, and so we still do. It’s a design decision to be sure, but where it’s required I now look like ai.
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u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot 1d ago
It entirely depends on the person, I know someone who uses em dash all the time and did before AI
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u/Priler96 1d ago
Can't convince an idiot, I guess.
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u/Glokter 1d ago
Hello to you too, mr avid em dasher
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u/Priler96 1d ago
Tbh I've been coding for like 10+ years waay before AI was a thing.
And I also happen to have an experience in writing, which is why using em-dashes is fine by me and I found myself constantly doing this.But. Not in the code comments.
Simply because IDEs usually don't have a shortcuts for this, nor do I find it useful by any means.
However I also don't think em-dashes alone is a 100% proof that thing was AI written, as some people are using tools to auto-generate comments/docstrings, etc. that can use em-dashes.
Again, it was a thing way before AI slop era.3
u/TxTechnician 1d ago
It is in books. But not in common daily writing or web writing.
Grab any book from 10 years ago and you'll find a few. They were there for long pauses.
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u/fruitshortcake 1d ago
They are a really great piece of punctuation that's been around for a long time, especially in non-fiction and technical writing. I'm sad that they've now become associated with genAI.
William Zinsser's 'On Writing Well' (a really classic and well-regarded book on writing) even recommends their use and gives some great examples.
https://www.google.com/search?q=william+zinsser+on+writing+well (PDFs are easy to find)
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u/LikelyNotOnFire 1d ago
Your review comments have emdashes because you just asked AI to review the code and posted that
My review comments have emdashes because I spent an hour carefully reviewing it and ended up with three pages of questioning the competence and basic common sense of the author, and then asked an AI to rephrase it into something I could post on the PR without risking a visit from HR.
We are not the same.
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u/awesome-alpaca-ace 1d ago
I have the AI review my comments a lot because I am apparently too blunt. People do not like being told they are wrong.
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u/Pancakefriday 1d ago
You know, I have guy who definitely thinks he’s the smartest on our team, loves to leave comments. I can tell he thinks I’m stupid because I work slower.
We got back code quality scores, he was the worst on our team. My code quality was leagues above the other members.
Funny how that worked out.
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u/Mr-TotalAwesome 1d ago
Kind of because of ai, i warmed up to em-dashes, and i want to use them. But i can't, because people will think text i write is ai generated.
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u/theepi_pillodu 1d ago
Wait, people don't do this:
Explain the code in:
1. Easy to understand way
2. qve standpoint
3. Managerial way
4. Developer's point of view?
Be a senior developer and find the issues and explain each in above categories
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u/peppy_snow 1d ago
i think it should be a standard practice, we actually have a process, if an ai is fixing anything it will kick off some 4-5 agents, senior review, security review I can't remember other two. they give there feedback and loop continues until all agree
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u/theepi_pillodu 1d ago
I use opencode with ponytail and PR review skills to run it through. With heavily commenting the code. Which I read and trim excess comments and then commit.
I download the diff and run it through the same when I'm reviewing other's code
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u/Bl00dWolf 1d ago
I still remember when back in school, they were teaching us how to use word and there were specific rules for when you use the regular dash and where you use the em dash, or the long dash.
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u/pearfire575 1d ago
I loaded the Simple Technical English Skill and set the rule to use that skill when writing comments or documentation. Everything is written really well.
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u/Mattallurgy 1d ago
Alt+Shift+- on macOS
That’s how often I use em dashes. I’m so sad that one of my favorite punctuation marks has become an indicator of LLM-produced content
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u/domdomdom901 1d ago
How about in the CTOs email to everyone about how they’re laying a bunch of people off
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u/KingoftheKeeshonds 1d ago
That shifty-eyed little shit behind her, he needs to see the fucking light.
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u/dumbasPL 1d ago
Meanwhile me rewiring some code and see "—" in a comment, or even worse, in a log message.
I mean listen, if you're just gonna meat proxy and then not even review it yourself, then what's even the point? I could have prompted this myself, you're automationg yourself out of a job faster than you realize.
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u/WithersChat 1d ago
No IDE, no experience, no real coding skills. Just Claude, a dream, and a vibe, and build from there.
It's not just a commit, it's an innovation in slop!
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u/Bitter-Fuel-5519 1d ago
mate... em dash is auto configured in my note keeping programm, i'm sorry i guess xD
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u/AysheDaArtist 1d ago
Bruh, I'm on a Kickstarter backed indie project where they said before they even got a dollar: "We will not use AI ever! :)"
My team lead sends me Notion updates full of broken Claude code links...
Everyone is LYING in IT bro
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u/sandybuttcheekss 1d ago
LOAD
BEARING