wakest ⁂Mar 26
Slop coded fediverse servers are multiplying I guess we need to start tracking this somewhere!? What happens when there are more AI generated server frameworks then human written ones? The do-ocracy of implementation first protocol inconsistency sorta wins right now but that brakes down when there are more bots making the call then humans
Show threadEmelia 👸🏻Mar 26

@liaizon i think this just tests the protocol and what people want to do with it to the limits, we're seeing vibe coded AT Protocol PDSes too!

Definitely highlights rough or under defined parts of specs & tests interoperability.

Show threadwakest ⁂Mar 26
@thisismissem I generally find it interesting. Seeing that the people making these really have almost no idea of how federation works and are able to get posts federating using entirely prompt engineering is pretty incredible. But I have been noticing the people behind these projects have mostly been very quiet about the fact that they are not doing any of the coding themselves. And when people ask them how things work there's this awkward pause
Show threadTodd SundstedMar 26

@liaizon @thisismissem LLMs aside for a moment, i'm not sure i see this as a net negative. if you have a group of people who aren't programmers, whether because of where and when they were born, their genetics, their training, their economics, and make it possible for them to participate in the open source ecosystem, i think that's an amazing gift. maybe not on day one when they, like i did once upon a time, publish garbage. but eventually.

i just don't see how gatekeeping someone's ability to participate in life where and when they choose, especially in open source, is a good thing. are we really the people who should be telling them "no, you don't get to be part of this!"

Show threadJulian FietkauMar 26

@toddsundsted Is there not a parallel here to “why learn to draw if genAI can spit out pictures that are good enough,” or “why lift weights at the gym if a forklift can do 100× as much?” Results are great, but they don't have to be literally 100% of what we care about.

Lowering barriers to entry to programming is wonderful. LLMs have me considering caveats on ensuring that new approaches actually lead towards understanding and growth outside of the specific tool.

@liaizon @thisismissem

Show threadJulian FietkauMar 26

@toddsundsted As an example, I love Scratch to bits: https://scratch.mit.edu It's built and framed as an educational environment, but it's clearly capable, and its use demonstrably builds understanding of programming logic.

I believe that LLMs *can* be used in a way that leads to similar understanding and growth. I'm not sure if they are very good at it. As @liaizon notes, the approach easily tempts people into publishing things they have little to no understanding of.

@thisismissem

Scratch - Imagine, Program, Share

Scratch is a free programming language and online community where you can create your own interactive stories, games, and animations.

Show threadTodd Sundsted
@julian i will be the first person to say i don't have all the answers, but i literally started "programming" by typing the source code for games in 80's programming magazines into the home computers of the time so i could play the games. i definitely didn't understand anything i was typing at first—understanding wasn't my goal. but it led to where i am today. i had friends that did the same thing who did not go on to become computer programmers. one became a nurse. one became a graphic designer. none of us knew what we were doing but one of us went on and learned more about it. i'm pretty okay with that ratio.
Mar 28 at 1:30pmWeb
Show threadJulian FietkauMar 28

@toddsundsted Heck yeah, that's how I started as well. 😄

Not everyone has to deeply know programming, but everyone is responsible for the open source code they publish. Back to @liaizon's point, there's always been shoddy open source code. But with or without LLMs, if you publish code that you can't answer people's questions on why it does what it does, that makes you a crappy open source programmer, and people would be correct to be wary about your software's reliability.

Show threadTodd SundstedMar 28
@julian yes! problems with crappy code and poor contributions predate LLMs by decades. my hope is that some number of people graduate from that to good developers using whatever tools kids use in the future.