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 threadTodd SundstedMar 28
@julian i think self-improvement for the sake of self-improvements itself is a wonderful goal. i think building software by hand for the sake of building software by hand fits in the category of self-improvement. it sure does for me, anyway! i hope we never end up in a future where no one does anything (cooking, painting, etc.) simply because there's no need to. 
Show threadJulian FietkauMar 28

@toddsundsted What I was trying to get at with those examples is, do you call weightlifters gatekeepers for only counting your accomplishments if you lift the weights without a forklift?

Whether a vibe coder who can't read any programming languages is a “real programmer” is ultimately a question of semantics that you can answer either way, but communities defining themselves by their capabilities is not inherently gatekeeping. Some words describe proficiency or experience, and that can be okay.

Show threadTodd Sundsted

@julian

Weightlifting is interesting because it's an area I know. Olympic weightlifting (and sports in general) very definitely have "gatekeepers" who set the boundaries or rules for participation. Olympics aside, weightlifting and bodybuilding both have had endless controversies about performance enhancing drugs all the way to using bench shirts and what counts as a "fair lift". Rules and gatekeepers are necessary to for fair competition. (And honestly, if someone wants to use a forklift to pick up a barbell and call themselves a weightlifter, weird but whatever... it's far from the dumbest thing people delude themselves into believing...)

I'm also fine with communities defining themselves in any way they choose, whether it's called gatekeeping or not. I think a sense of shared identity, values, and behaviors is inherent in almost any coherent community, and I think that's fine.

If someone never looks at the code an LLM generates for them, I personally don't think they're a "programmer" in any meaningful sense—and I think there are pragmatic reasons to worry about code quality if there's not a human in the loop.

But I would not argue that we should keep people who use LLMs from participating in or contributing to the fediverse merely because they use LLMs. And I think agreeing on fine-grained rules for inclusion or not is hopeless.

This gets to the core of what I'm trying to communicate overall. I think we should default to welcome people to fediverse instead of looking for reasons to keep them out.

Mar 28 at 7:09pmWeb
Show threadJulian FietkauMar 29

@toddsundsted I also don't think LLM users should be prohibited from contributing to the fediverse. Notably, no one in this thread has advocated that position, so I'm not sure why we're talking about it.

Reading the thread from the top again, I think this exchange (although it has been polite and constructive!) isn't really going anywhere. You've said your piece, I have objected to the points I felt were objectionable, I reckon let's call it done. 🙂