Apps and AI. A lot of opinions

Applications Others
1

Hello everyone. I’d like to briefly interject. I’m aware that AI-generated apps aren’t exactly popular here.

I, too, am a supporter of programs developed by skilled programmers. However, I need to make a distinction.

The best example is a well-functioning Matrix client. Sure, there’s Hydrogen or even Sailtrix. Good programs. I used Sailtrix for a very long time. However, development there has essentially stalled. While the developer has done a good job, essential errors are creeping in, such as rooms being confused or crashes, rendering the app unusable. The developer isn’t responding to user inquiries. (Which I don’t condemn; we don’t know the developers’ circumstances.) It’s important to remember that they always develop these apps voluntarily and without pay. So I appreciate that.

Now, there are people who help themselves. For example, JimKnopfIoT. He built Xmatic, a powerful native Matrix client that also works great. Of course, he uses AI to help him. After all, he’s not a developer. He then made the app available on Openrepos (at my urging) and was subsequently attacked.

Personally, I see this app as an improvement, as it replaces three Android apps on my Sailfish OS. Of course, he made the code available on GitHub, which is only right for open source. Instead of complaining, one could look at the code and offer suggestions for improvement… Or do you see it differently?

I don’t want any hostility here. We are all users of the best smartphone system in the world, and we are a community. Let’s help each other instead of being enemies.

P.S. I have to mention one more thing. Please, no more Telegram clients… Please, no more. Teletype is perfectly sufficient. Maybe a fork for video calls. But please, nothing more :wink:

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2

Quality issues aside (AI in general, non-programmers as reviewers in particular).
Surely a vibe-coded app, which the developer has not poured their heart and soul into, will go out of maintenance even quicker? Then what did we gain?

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3

No, why would it stay that way? If we help new people improve by pointing out the missing things in their applications and helping them make them higher quality, we contribute to making the ecosystem better. But if we take the approach of “get lost, come back when you’re better,” we will neither encourage people who are genuinely interested nor increase the number of developers.

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4

AI-generated code is often a mess of thousands of lines that is impossible to audit. I prefer quality over quantity. Our smartphones are precious, I don’t want to run binaries pulled out of a hat. I have nothing against AI, I’ve been using Sailfish since the first Jolla and I’ve built up trust in certain developers who contributed before the arrival of LLMs.

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5

You are right in this, but @attah also has a point: AI apps don’t solve the problem of apps being abandoned. They might even make this problem worse, because if it is purely vibe-coded, the issues might get out of hand for the unexperienced person who only wrote this with AI and is unable to maintain it because of a lack of knowledge.

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6

A working app? Please look at that from other side. For instance, for several years people were begging for working, up to date browser - in vain. Then suddenly boom and thanks to AI they were provided with several working browsers.
AI speeds up work so much that there is no way back.

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7

Well but if you develop a new app with AI because an old one is unmaintained and therefore doesn’t work anymore, we gained not much because it is very likely that this fate will also happen to the AI generated app, maybe even quicker

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8

If everyone just does their own thing and never contributes, we just get a graveyard of slightly better apps that too get abandoned. I have zero interest in any but the official browser - and that would appear rather light on the AI usage front.

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9

Absolutely - a vibecoded app’s construction is not understood by its “dev” (more like “prompt poster”), it is not reviewed, tested, or maintained like a selfmade app - at least that’s the case in most of these findings. It doesn’t matter whether it is at my work (many devs means one or another “lazy dev” aka vibecoder, whose contributions fail more often than others so people give those well-known guys less important tasks) or OpenRepos/Chum. Do what you want but PLEASE put a “made with AI” tag on that - I do not want to have data lost, altered or published just because someone else doesn’t care about safety and security.
Cheers.

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10

An AI empored app can be only so good as as the people of the other side of the screen. If a developer is able to make an app w/o AI than he can create also a good app with AI. If the developer is not able to this w/o the magic help of AI the result can’t be what we want.

Or have you an example to proof me wrong??

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11

Guys believe it or not but most of app developed AD 2026 are vibe coded and you do not even realize it.

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12

So basically, you are saying not to give support. The responsibility that Attah is talking about — will it actually be maintained and improved over time, or will someone just make one app and then the next day not care about it anymore, walking around making a “la la la la” sound? But this is a very unpredictable question because it depends on the person.

If that person is persistent and understands what responsibility means, they will continue to stand behind their application and keep providing users with a good experience as much as they can.

I understand what you mean otherwise, but there is another point I would like you to consider: developers who write code without using AI do not always keep their applications updated either. So while Attah is talking about this issue, maybe the way it was presented turned into something like: “The app you want to make already exists, and if you make one too, will you even be able to make it as good as that one?”

It kind of became a different question.

13

As I said, I don’t want to start a hate thread here. It would simply make sense if a usable app, developed with AI support and published on GitHub, were reviewed by an experienced developer. We really need apps. (Please, no Telegram forks, I can’t stress this enough.) Like a Matrix client, for example (that need is already met). For well-intentioned developments, support would be better than banning…

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14

So far these are basically zero.
The git history of those that even published any source code has been laughable.

An “experienced developer” has been nowhere in the mix.

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15

Then you should support exactly those who publish these.

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16

I don’t think it’s related. When I made a screen recording application, you basically labeled me as a hacker just because I didn’t immediately publish the source code as open source. Stop with this attitude of pretending everything has to be so formal.

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17

I did not. I questioned the quality and architecture. You also could not provide answers why things looked the way they did.

And, indeed, your git history was laughable.
Therefore i will not engage with your app.

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18

No, I did answer most of the things. I even published it as open source later, and then I told Andrew to review it. Do you really think there was actually a situation where it could be considered hacking? You didn’t see any of that.

He only said things like cleaning up old, unused Qt parts in the code and making the way it works more properly structured. What I mean is, if you had been patient before labeling it, I would have shared the open source code anyway sooner or later.

You didn’t wait, though. But thankfully, a friend unintentionally understood the situation I was put into and gave you a really good sentence.

19

What part of “i did not say that” do you have a problem with?
You keep making all this shit up that i never said. This translator of yours really is a piece of work.

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20

On OpenRepos, Chum and other self-maintained source platforms we have to trust the devs. If those cannot explain their own code, that trust is zero for every clear-thinking person. You wouldn’t try evry unknown guy’s self-made candy, either.
Cheers.

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