@cwebber The entire industry, but probably Free Software in particular, is almost certainly going to need to invest in some form of addiction treatment for this. They're irritating and we all knew exactly where their path would end, but the alternative to helping them is hoping to recruit new people into a devastated landscape...

(And we should probably standing behind our software instead of loudly disclaiming responsibility in licenses, and so many other things to get things back working...)

@cwebber related predictable situation - you became dependent on this entire workflow and it stopped being subsidized and you're now stranded because this workflow isn't [yet?] backwards-compatible with coding by hand.

@cwebber The worst part of this is that these projects will inevitably end up eating into the tiny resource pools (contributors, donators, translators, etc) of the greater Open Source world that has been struggling to stay alive forever.

@cwebber It is a bit more nuanced. I personally dislike the programming itself. I review the code, I use agents as a "more capable" grep or for bulk edits. I use them to bootstrap small projects and monitor the process. They have their uses _in programming_.

But software engineering is much, MUCH more than just programming. And people who are eager to outsource their brains were already dangerous before, but nobody had handed them the tools to destroy.

@cwebber

A widely used FOSS project I've been contributing to started to overly rely on LLM, especially for fixing bugs on systems they're not familiar with (e.g. FreeBSD).

When I offered to help (without LLMs of course), they simply replied "no thanks, but can review the (LLM-authored) code if you like".

I don't know what to say anymore, or if I should keep contributing to or even use that project. Sure, maintaining a FOSS project is cumbersome, but it doesn't have to come to this...

@cwebber tbf if they're burnt out I'd suggest the LLM doing the fun stuff for them isn't the problem. If it was the response would be boredom not burn out imo. Being burned out sounds like not knowing how to take a day off to me. I believe I see this a lot in engineers who don't know how to do anything else (this was me at one point)

@cwebber tech debt is bad enough and burns you out quickly enough when you're the one doing the actual architecting, can't imagine how bad it'd be letting stochastic parrots take the wheel but i guess it sounds pretty dang bad

@cwebber I'm so glad I never let an agent anywhere near any of my actual code

I wish I never decided to ever try communicating with an LLM instead of a damn plushie about whatever issue I happen to be stuck on

and I am so fucking glad I stopped when I did

@cwebber shortcuts always come with a bill. 🙃

@cwebber I've had luck with getting the robot to only work on a tiny section of the code and not look anywhere else. It helps in the sense that the robot can type faster than me and runs tests automatically. I'm not sure what more folks expect from it.

@cwebber I made something for work using Blender, and a higher-up suggested using AI.

sure, take away the most fun parts. Why don't you kick my robot dog

@cwebber just to be clear, Mastodon is all in on anti-Ai?

@cwebber I uh ....

I kinda went the other direction.

I'm taking my time engineering the shit out of the simplest piece of software ever: a contact form server. I was burned the fuck out. Now I'm having fun again :)

I'm still baffled and hurt that the people who thought xor with hard coded "password" is "encryption" were seen as more valuable than me, but I'm enjoying this again and enjoying the progress I am making.

I don't need AI to spam reviewers with working and fully tested code

@cwebber on one have this is awful, was completely preventable, and now the commons is riddled with sloprot including many critical projects that will take decades to rebuild and this hurts *everybody*

on the other hand, [nelson from the simpsons voice] HAW HAW

@cwebber Unfortunately, a lot of FOSS now is career checklisting.

Just like high school students know to add volunteering to their college application -- to look like they want to help others, show leadership, and are exposed to different life experiences...

CS grads know to have a GitHub account with activity -- to look like they have passion for the field, do something clever, and have that added experience.

That started before AI, and AI homework cheating culture makes it worse.