So I vibe-coded some effects...

[sixfootdad]

Hi folks - I've really been wanting to learn more about creating effects but just haven't had the headspace to learn something new on top of life, family, day job, etc. So I thought I would try out GPT5 mini in VSCode to see how it would handle creating Mesmerizer effects based on a prompt. These took a number of iterations to get them to where I liked them. I'm curious, in y'all's opinion, how terrible is the code quality on these? They build & run on the Mesmerizer kit I bought from Dave.

Sorry for the zip. I didn't want to open a PR just to have a conversation, and I haven't pushed them to any repo of mine yet. They're just two .h files - one is called Boxes and the other is Warp. Patterns.zip

[robertlipe]

Hi, Damian. Actually, for discussing code, tossing it on GitHub where people can see it and analyze it with familiar code really is the way to go. I have some nits (I always do - Dave's about tired of me. :-) ) like weird whitespacing, using new loop iterators, making your own bresneham when we already have several, making your own safe draw pixel thing when www have several, the use of double-precision math (which is emulated in software on ESP32) instead of single precision floats (which are in hardware), excessive static_cats, my preference of early return over lengthy if else chains, namining conventions (prefer kFoo over foo when it's a constant), the weird additional iner scope for the "blue tinting", preference for std::clamp over what you did with centerWeight, and such, but the code isn't BAD. I know it sounds like I'm shredding it, but that's kind of how code reviews work; people (so far, mostly humans) that have reached zen with the code base and know overall styles and other functions that a blind "make me a thingy" AI command might not find is how we make code better. That's how it works reviewing human-authored code,too. Note that I'm explicitly NOT commenting on the likelihood of it being accepted (I'm clearly no good at that - see the branch named after me for a few dozen effects I worked up that didn't make the cut) or the quality of the pixels splashed around. I've actually found it helpful to also get AI to barf up an HTML preview when doing show-and-tells, such as my recent https://robertlipe.com/tmp/PatternCyclicCA.html Calling drawRectangle to draw a pixel is just weird. Please use our actual primitives. I'm skeptical that the setting code works, but I'm a terrible reviewer for that since I don't think I've ever successfully landed settings code without extensive coaching from Rutger. It might be a fun exercise to feed it the other effects as context and ask it to make this code more like the existing practice (not that even that is always awesome...) and tell it to use best practice modern C++, such as modern loops, using std::clamp, I have a GEMINI.md that I use to sway Gemini's own crazy styles more toward what's done here. I'm pretty sure that Dave has one for Copilot. Maybe we should start chucking those into the tree so we're not all convincing our AI's about our interpretations of The Right Way.

…

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 7:02 PM Damian Karlson ***@***.***> wrote: Hi folks - I've really been wanting to learn more about creating effects but just haven't had the headspace to learn something new on top of life, family, day job, etc. So I thought I would try out GPT5 mini in VSCode to see how it would handle creating Mesmerizer effects based on a prompt. These took a number of iterations to get them to where I liked them. I'm curious, in y'all's opinion, how *terrible* is the code quality on these? They build & run on the Mesmerizer kit I bought from Dave. Sorry for the zip. I didn't want to open a PR just to have a conversation, and I haven't pushed them to any repo of mine yet. They're just two .h files - one is called Boxes and the other is Warp. Patterns.zip <https://github.com/user-attachments/files/21908196/Patterns.zip> — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#750>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACCSD37SASTE3E7QEYW5TO33OUEANAVCNFSM6AAAAACENAIYM2VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43ERDJONRXK43TNFXW4OZYG43TAMBYGM> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[sixfootdad]

Thanks, I appreciate your time and opinion. I follow this repo, and I see the opinionated discussions in the reviews & PRs. At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to show y'all AI slop that only exists because I wanted to try making effects...and then the more I thought about it, I got around to "well, why the hell not. what's the worst that can happen." :)

[robertlipe]

what's the worst that can happen.

Oh, if it was just the biggest pile of suck I'd ever seen (a hotly contested title), you'd have heard about that, too. :-) The design isn't *bad*. The implementation isn't *bad*. It's not flagrantly AI-scented with bullet lists with ❌ and ✅ all over the place. If you'd told me it was an early programming effort from someone new to the language and new to the project, I wouldn't have blinked an eye at it. You've been here a while; you've seen me offer language coaching/reviewing/mentoring pretty equally to everyone, regardless of experience level...and whether they want it or not. :-) If you (well, if those with opinions that actually count) think these effects are awesome enough to be included, I'd encourage you to spin up a fork with all that annoying other stuff that effects need so that others with Mesmerizers can experience the visuals for comment and those that care about code can argue bits and bytes. It's not my project, but open source works by people making code, mostly to scratch their own itches. If this was just a learning experience for you and you don't care,but you have more blinkies that you like, great. Mission accomplished. If you want to try to land it, those of us that DO care about such things can help with that. Since you're the second person to mention it within the hour, you're correct that there's a bit of tension in the style of those that review such things here. For example, I come from a different pedigree of large companies with different style guides, and "complete English sentences <https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html#Punctuation_Spelling_and_Grammar> with punctuation" is drilled into us because we had a large number of non-English natives in the code. I've lost that battle (repeatedly) here, so I didn't call it out in this code. I've just accepted that that's the norm here. Likewise, I actually had to check the standard that, unlike C, leading underscores in symbols actually are legal class member names just because I'd never seen that elsewhere, <https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html#Variable_Names> as putting them in the back is the norm. They're a disaster in global scope because leading underscores are reserved in C, and the library and OS may conflict with them. There are preferences and styles, there's correctness, and there's just plain good taste. It's pretty nice that I didn't see anything in the middle category (off-by-ones, loops that walk off the end, etc.) in this code. So your code generator is correct (well, maybe it's so wrong that I just didn't catch it) it's just having trouble keeping a consistent "accent" and in picking up the nuances of the larger, overall project. That's a passing score. Now, for those of us that are AI-curious, how did this come about? Did you say, "Make me a pattern," and let it venture off on its own, or did you describe visually how you wanted it to look and then let it code it or something in between?

…

On Wed, Aug 20, 2025 at 7:47 PM Damian Karlson ***@***.***> wrote: Thanks, I appreciate your time and opinion. I follow this repo, and I see the opinionated discussions in the reviews & PRs. At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to show y'all AI slop that only exists because I wanted to try making effects...and then the more I thought about it, I got around to "well, why the hell not. what's the worst that can happen." :) — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#750 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACCSD32PMYDKNLYK4KI72GL3OUJLHAVCNFSM6AAAAACENAIYM2VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTIMJXGE2TIMY> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: <PlummersSoftwareLLC/NightDriverStrip/repo-discussions/750/comments/14171543 @github.com>

[sixfootdad]

No, I was very specific about what I wanted. Vibe coding tends to work better when you have a clear direction, especially when working with existing code. I really like geometric patterns, so for the boxes effect I started with a prompt requiring that I wanted square boxes that would evenly fill out any size matrix with no unused space, and added some remote button input to change the size of the boxes within that constraint. Ultimately, I didn't like how that turned out, and didn't like that I'd taken over some "reserved" remote inputs to change the boxes so I settled on the 8x8 pixel size to fit the 32x64 mesmerizer matrix. There was a lot of other tuning around using more obvious colors for each box and not picking a color that was near a neighboring box just to break up the effect and make it more visually compelling. I also chose to cycle through established FastLED palettes rather than building out color buckets from 0-255 randomly - mostly because I like the predominantly blue palette.

For the warp effect, I'd wanted something like (what I mistakenly remembered) the Millennium Falcon hyper-drive. Originally the effect didn't use the middle 1/3 of the matrix so I prompted it a lot to tighten up the middle and to add more blue (again, I really enjoy blue LED light). I manually tweaked the number of stars and tightened the center to use as much of the matrix as possible. I'm still not happy with it but it's got a high enough FPS that I find it fun to run for extended periods of time and the Mesmerizer doesn't reboot out of exhaustion. I realized after the fact that neither Star Wars or Star Trek use extended star streak warp sequences...but whatever.

I originally fell in love with coding way back in the QBasic/MS-DOS 5 days, and wrote a "screensaver" from scratch that looked a lot like the NightDriverStrip Lines effect. IIRC, that was also an early Windows screensaver - maybe 3.1? Anyways, messing around with the hub75 matrix scratches that same itch. Write code, make pixel do pretty thing, be happy :)

[robertlipe]

No, I was very specific about what I wanted.

Interesting. Thank you. I've had some luck with the opposite when building effects, either by feeding Gemini nerd math (as with the cited automata thing that I need to get back to...) or just giving it visual constraints and a dash of inspiration and letting it go. As a tease for the six people that actually read these discussions, I spent MONTHS scribbling in a notebook (yeah, paper. Wanna start somethin'?) trying to get the hex math right that's described in https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/. Once I let three Ais (Gemini, ChatGPT, Windsurf) tag team it (none of them got it right) I FINALLY got to a happy place, but I made enough of a mess in the process that I'm still some time away from submitting it. That's one of two NigthDriverLED projects I've done where I relied heavily on AI and probably wouldn't have succeeded without it. This is why I'm interested in how others are succeeding.

use extended star streak warp sequences...but whatever.

No need. They've already arrived! Plus, if you show it long, people can see the wires...

scratches that same itch. Write code, make pixel do pretty thing, be happy :)

Same. After years of working on invisible things, there's something satisfying about working on attention-getters. "Hey, you know when you pressed tab and your cursor landed in the right place? That was my code! No, man, you don't understand. It's just a multiple of eight. You backspaced over a multibyte character!" My parents never had any idea what I did for a living. Everyone loves blinky lights. Blink on!

[heidepiek]

Here’s one more person actually reading the discussion. I grabbed the zip file, and since I’d never tried this before, I first checked the existing effects in the code. I got Damian’s two effects running on my Mesmerizer, and honestly, I think they look pretty good.

Don’t ask me about the code quality though. Someone told me last week: as long as it works, that’s what counts. When that was running, I tried making an effect together with Chat, and the result was “Fireworks.”

Thanks, Damian, for kicking off this discussion. Looks like Harke picked up a new little skill along the way too!

effects.mp4

[rbergen]

So adding my two cents to this:

• @robertlipe was right about how to get people to engage with your code: create a GitHub fork, add your code to it, and link to whatever files you want to point out in your discussion.
• No, the code isn't bad. All notes @robertlipe made are not nits but valid though to some extent at least, and many of them - including stuff like white spacing - matter for submitted code for any project where people still are responsible for the quality of the overall codebase. (And my view on the current state of AI affairs is that any project that multiple people contribute to - AI-assisted or not - should have people responsible for the end result of any merged contribution.)
• As to what @heidepiek's contact said: that's true if it's just for whoever created it and it doesn't have to work (at least in terms of maintainability) on the longer term. You can build a house out of cardboard if you're happy to get wet when it rains, and you don't need it to still function as a house one or two weeks down the line. And again, this point is based on the assumption that humans still have a role to play in making decisions on what makes sense, and doing work on the code.
• Any decisions about potentially including effects I will defer to @davepl.