Nolan LawsonJan 17

"Stay away from my trash!" by Steve Ruiz https://tldraw.dev/blog/stay-away-from-my-trash

I've been thinking about this exact same problem of AI contributions in OSS, and I think he's onto something. "If writing the code is the easy part, why would I want someone else to write it?"

Stay away from my trash! - tldraw: Infinite Canvas SDK for React

The tldraw SDK provides tools, services, and APIs to build beautiful whiteboards and infinite canvas applications with real-time collaboration and a powerful React-based canvas.

Show threadNolan LawsonJan 17

"Once we had the context we needed and the alignment on what we would do, the final implementation would have been almost ceremonial. Who wants to push the button?"

This is what I've observed in my day-to-day work: the hard part is no longer typing the code but aligning on solutions, weighing tradeoffs, reaching a shared understanding, etc. For OSS I have no idea what this means except that the value of drive-by PRs has plunged to nearly zero.

Show threadNolan LawsonJan 17
I've long said that I saw little value in, say, PRs to my emoji picker to customize how the favorites are displayed, or whether the corners are rounded, or whatever – just use `patch-package` if you want to customize. Now this is even truer since developers are no longer limited by their familiarity with the codebase, coding ability, etc. If you want rounded corners just tell your LLM to do it – why should I accept your PR so that you can `npm install` it instead? It wouldn't even save you time.
Show threadNolan LawsonJan 17
This new era is so bizarre, and I don't even know what "open source" means anymore. I guess it means you've vetted some AI-generated code that passed your tests, which means you saved the next AI model some time in reinforcement learning when it slurps up your codebase? What a weird world.
Show threadNikita Karamov
@nolan s/your tests/AI-generated tests sadly
Jan 18 at 6:36amWeb