Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

I would have wholeheartedly agreed with this comment one year ago. Now, not so much.

I think that who says that you need to be accustomed to the current "tools" related to AI agents, is suffering from a horizon effect issue: these stuff will change continuously for some time, and the more they evolve, the less you need to fiddle with the details. However, the skill you need to have, is communication skills. You need to be able to express yourself and what matters for your project fast and well. Many programmers are not great at communication. In part this is a gift, something you develop at small age, and this will, I believe, kinda change who is good at programming: good communicators / explorers may not have a edge VS very strong coders that are bad at explaining themselves. But a lot of it is attitude, IMHO. And practice.

I see AI effect as exact opposite, a turbo version of "lisp curse".

The anti-AI hype, in the context of software development, seems to focus on a few things:

> AI code is slop, therefore you shouldn't use it

You should learn how to responsibly use it as a tool, not a replacement for you. This can be done, people are doing it, people like Salvatore (antirez), Mitchell (of Terraform/Ghostty fame), Simon (swillison) and many others are publicly talking about it.

> AI can't code XYZ

It's not all-or-nothing. Use it where it works for you, don't use it where it doesn't. And btw, do check that you actually described the problem well. Slop-in, slop-out. Not sayin' this is always the case, but turns out it's the case surprisingly often. Just sayin'

> AI will atrophy your skills, or prevent you from learning new ones, therefore you shouldn't use it

Again, you should know where and how to use it. Don't tune out while doing coding. Don't just skim the generated code. Be curious, take your time. This is entirely up to you.

> AI takes away the fun part (coding) and intensifies the boring (management)

I love programming but TBH, for non-toy projects that need to go into production, at least three quarters are boring boilerplate. And making that part interesting is one of the worst things you can do in software development! That path lies resume-driven development, architecture astronautics, abusing design patterns du jour, and other sins that will make code maintenance on that thing a nightmare! You want boring, stable, simple. AI excels at that. Then you can focus on the small tiny bit that's fun and hand-craft that!

Also, you can always code for fun. Many people with boring coding jobs code for fun in the evenings. AI changes nothing here (except possibly improving the day job drudgery).

> AI is financially unsustainable, companies are losing money

Perhaps, and we're probably in the bubble. Doesn't detract from the fact that these things exist, are here now, work. OpenAI and Anthropic can go out of business tomorrow, the few TB of weights will be easily reused by someone else. The tech will stay.

> AI steals your open source code, therefore you shouldn't write open-source

Well, use AI to write your closed-source code. You don't need to open source anything if you're worried someone (AI or human) will steal it. If you don't want to use something on moral grounds, that's a perfectly fine thing to do. Others may have different opinion on this.

> AI will kill your open source business, therefore you shouldn't write open-source

Open source is not a business model (I've been saying this for longer than median user of this site has been alive). AI doesn't change that.

As @antirez points out, you can use AI or not, but don't go hiding under a rock and then being surprised in a few years when you come out and find the software development profession completely unrecognizable.

Ultimately most things in life and society where one freely gives (and open source could be said to be one such activity) is also balanced by advising everyone participating in the "system" to also reciprocate the same, without which it becomes an exploitative relationship. Examples of such sayings can be found in most major world religions, but a non-religious explanation of the dynamics at hand follows below.

If running an open source model means that I have only given out without receiving anything, there remains the possibility of being exploited. This dynamic has always existed, such as companies using a project and sending in vulnerability reports and the like but not offering to help, and instead demanding, often quite rudely.

In the past working with such extractive contributors may have been balanced with other benefits such as growing exposure leading to professional opportunities, or being able to sell hosted versions, consulting services and paid features, which would have helped the maintainer of the open source project pay off their bills and get ahead in life.

However with the rise of LLMs, it both facilitates usage of the open source tools without getting a chance to direct their attention towards these paid services, nor allows the maintainer to have direct exposure to their contributors. It also indirectly violates the spirit of said open source licenses, as LLMs can spit out the knowledge contained in these codebases at a scale that humans cannot, thus allowing people to bypass the license and create their own versions of the tools, which are themselves not open source despite deriving their knowledge from such data.

Ultimately we don't need to debate about this; if open source remains a viable model in the age of LLMs, people will continue to do it regardless of whether we agree or disagree regarding topics such as this; on the other hand, if people are not rewarded in any way we will only be left with LLM generated codebases that anyone could have produced, leaving all the interesting software development to happen behind closed doors in companies.