I Am Not a Reverse Centaur

This reminds me of the recent "I don't want your PRs anymore", except getting there from the opposite place. The priors in that article alienated me (the author assumed other developers were using an LLM, just like they were), whereas I relate to the ones here, but the outcome makes me feel similarly sad. LLMs really are breaking open source culture in a fundamental way.

My perception is that there is less interest in open source, and in coding in general.

I feel this, too, especially about less interest in coding, and the inherent worth of sharing code with others. Up until LLMs came about, sharing your code meant sharing your process as much as it meant sharing the end result. Every line of code in a hand-written project was a decision,* and you could geek out on how someone was thinking by reading their code. In fact, when I was learning to program, one of the most common pieces of advice was "read code from popular projects" - and I often did, especially when picking up a new language. Now, for anything touched by LLMs, it feels pretty pointless. There's something profoundly anti-intellectual in all this.

*I don't mean codegen, which was much more limited in scope

Does open source matter anymore?

Periodic reminder that the term "open source" came from trying to make free software more corporate-friendly by divorcing it from its ethical/moral foundation. "Open source" was always about making companies more profitable from the very start.

A better question is whether free software is still relevant, or whether the free software movement is still relevant.

My perception is that there is less interest in open source, and in coding in general.

My young coworkers have told me that CS enrollment has dropped significantly over the last 4 years. Part of it was COVID, but a significant part is the insecurities they see in the industry and the world with the advent of AI.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/college-admissions/article/uc-major-computer-science-ai-21284464.php