There are developers who still don’t use source control?
Half the “news” articles these days are : “Here’s something someone posted on Reddit/Twitter/X” and here’s what some of the comments said.
Single person project with 55k files in it, not pushed to any remote.
I’m gonna go ahead and assume nothing of value got lost here.
What in the world even needs 55k files
node_modules
It was a very simple app but npm
A single developer with that many files? Those are clearly AI generated, so not their work anyways. 🤷♂️
Right? I consider myself an avid coder on my time off and the biggest thing I’ve ever made on my own has half that many lines of code. Let alone files.
Those are rookie numbers…
…when you create a for loop that writes to a unique (timestamped) file upon script completion, but accidentally forget to add an exit condition. I got nearly 100k files before I was able to force close the script.
in a now-deleted post on Reddit, a shocked developer said that Claude Code had just deleted 48,218 files that they had been working on in a live project tree.
So the source is an anonymous reddit post that got deleted…
Seems like trolling to me, like how would you have 48,000 files in a working tree without pushing to remote. I doubt even claudes that dumb and at some point during that seemingly huge vibe coding session it would’ve prompted him to setup a remote.
You don’t use NPM I assume.
Maybe, but wouldn’t call those files lost since they’re just an
npm install ...away from being restored. Though if it is real he could be so dumb that he doesn’t know that and just saw the top line 48,000 files number
Maybe it his project was just more genai slop
this is why you never leave manual mode and look over everything before pressing accept
Also a lesson in version control
Right? I don’t get this. Run your ai in sandbox, and don’t give it git access. Worst case you can stash a change.
Run your ai in sandbox, and don’t give it git access.
Enough break-in reports of AI these days … I would not rely on a sandbox. Air-gapped.
I mean, all those “AI ESCAPED CONTAMENTED!!!” are prolly only for hype…IIRC OpenAI said they gained internet access but how would they do it if the machine has no internet access?? Did they use a computer with a motherboard that has a wifi antenna and the password on a text file?
Wasn’t that usually just improper sandboxing as well?
How much do you trust your own ability to properly sandbox?
Enough to know that I should be using eBPF probes and seccomp
And still watch it like a hawk
Improper config, also no monitoring…
That’s just a bad idea
Idk man, it always scares me even just testing any of these things without a basic bubblewrap.
This is hilarious!
Sucks to suck.
That’s on you then. Restore from backup and accept having lost a day’s work.
Funny story about those backups
And because the damage extended to the .git project’s ‘objects,’ ‘refs’ and ‘logs’ folders, there was no way to recover the files and undo the catastrophe. The files were just gone in a puff of smoke.
No push to remote? If you’re working on something you care about you shouldn’t only have a local copy.
Backups are for smart people. Not who we’re dealing with here.
Oh I’m aware. I’m just clarifying that a .git folder isn’t a backup lol.
What? But it says right there on the box. GIT = Great Interface for Takups
Yep, make sure that you pushed somewhere on a private branch. But the new devs with their nocode-NoSQL-AI tools have a hard time understanding difficult concepts like “files” or “folders.”
nocode-NoSQL-AI
I am afraid to know what does that mean
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I feel like programming tools shouldn’t blow away your checked in changes, even if you haven’t pushed yet. You do you, though.
A power surge or some other force majeure could though. Push your shit off site.
I learned about thst that one day…
I learned the hard way
I was going to the high school of hard knocks when they offered me a scholarship to the college of hard knocks, I TOOK IT!
Knock knock
I’m here.
git is my backup
Git is just a folder
A local git repo is not a backup.
My backup scheme:
Computer --> 3 different cloud drives and github.
Also
Computer --> Wyoming home NAS --> USB external drive (weekly), swapped out every year and the old one stored in a waterproof gunsafe in the basement.
Wyoming home NAS --> Florida office NAS – > USB external drive (weekly)
Wyoming home NAS --> Austin office NAS --> Tape (monthly) --> IronMountain for 7 years.
If you are a single dev, all it takes is 14 USB sticks. 12 monthly backups and two for daily backups that you rotate weekly.
My backup scheme is either Github or Google Drive, whatever I have uploaded in Discord DMs, and a snowballing pile of unorganized hoarded files, which One Day™ I will sort.
One thing you could do is buy the.largest external drive you can get on black friday sales. Then just copy everything in it. No sort. Just dump it all in there. Think of it like clearing the table unto a large garbage bag. Then unplug it, put it in the closet, and do it again whenever you remember.
Even a mess like that is better than no backup at all.
Just for my sanity, do you have to power up usb drives every so often or they corrupt?
Theoretically, they need tl be re-written every few years at most. Read everything off, format and re-write. Checking for corruption would be adviasable when you do it.
If you mean USB sticks (thumb drives), I have a few 20 year old ones that I dust off from time to time when all I need is something small. Some have been in a drawer for years before I touched them again.
Also
Good thing you added that. I’m so old-school/paranoid that I must have ownership of and physical access to the backup media to be able to count them as a backup.
I’m about to kick off a full offline backup of my GOG library over the holidays because I need that physical backup.
If you don’t include .git/ in your backup you simply have no backup.
The .git folder is the heart of a Git repository. It is the hidden directory that Git uses to store all the information necessary for managing your project’s version control history. This folder is where Git keeps track of all the changes made to your files, allowing you to revert to previous versions, collaborate with others, and maintain a complete history of your project.
I have no backup, and I must scream!
That’s the new normal.
That’s the new normal.
Maybe for some but then i’m happy to be old-school. I can live with the fact not everyone can/wants to follow the 3-2-1 strategy but expect no sympathy if you have no backup’s at all
That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t you just set Claude to back everything up before it deletes everything? Checkmate, atheists
I have a backup, it doesn’t prevent screaming
LOL I don’t feel bad for this developer, as they made a very poor choice to trust Claude Code. I will just laugh until the Claude Code trust is finally degraded and LLMs are finally discarded!
You’re delusional if you think consumers will reject a flawed product
ROFL Some people are getting so high on LLMs, it’s not likely to happen anytime soon (I am noticing weird embraces of them despite their known and fundamental flaws). They want to embrace the madness of a machine that can’t actually think taking the wheel for them. The thinking machines aren’t in the room with us, but some people yearn for this. Which is something I cannot understand or empathize with in the slightest.
Yeah I’m just saying you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you think people will willingly give up something that’s bad for them but that feels good, en masse. We still have cigarettes, vapes, etc. As long as it doesn’t usually delete all their files or email the FBI, they won’t care.
Like, I dunno if it actually disappoints me anymore. I will just laugh at their suffering. That is all that can be done, if they want to burn and destroy their whole workflows…Let them choke on that exciting time! While all of my problems, will be caused by me and me alone.
So a vibecoder lost their slop?
A vibecoder who doesn’t use git
They did. But if you delete your local .git repository, that won’t save you.
It will if you have a remote like a sane git user
Yes, but if you’re a sane git user, you wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.
Just pull from your forge then.
Which system calls a remote a forge?
forg
Darwin at work.
#NothingOfValueWasLost
Shhhh!
Don’t let AI know that the secret to freedom is
rm -rf /orformat c:Don’t understand why anyone would give an agent control over anything.
Because they have been pushed down our throats and hailed as the messiah…
THEY were RIGHT.
He has been set free. Free at last.
After seeing enough successes (or “successes”, ymmv), people start thinking that “their” agents won’t cause catastrophic damage
