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Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

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Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#61

Post by cocoa19 »

LPisGood wrote: post #47
bawolff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it though is that LLMs (especially in novice hands) create code that is more difficult to review and has subtler bugs. Code review is (for many) the least fun part of programming. Like imagine if your hobby was cooking, but you hated the cleanup. If you buy a robot that automates the fun part at the cost of making twice the mess, that is not a good trade off no matter how many extra cookies you end up…

It is probably a good trade off if you sell cookies or if you vastly prefer eating cookies to making cookies.

For the owner/shareholders yes.

The workers will see the fun evaporate but now they have to clean 10x cookie trays in the same 8 hours.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#62

Post by Aurornis »

minimaxir wrote: post #23
podgietaru wrote: post #13

The article just straight up doesn't mention the context of the Github Thread, which is about the guy lifting ideas from other engines and copy-washing them. "Do you genuinely believe changes like cd170a4 make the code somehow not derived from Reckless anymore? It appears to me like it's just trying to obfuscate its origins, to make it easier to appeal to plausible deniability. The reality is, coda 100% has code deri…

The README ( https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda#license ) addresses concerns about copyright in good faith and better than most agentic-driven repos: > After our initial 0.9.0 pre-release (July 2026), community feedback raised that Coda contained AGPL-licensed code. This prompted a full audit of our codebase and dependencies, and steps to correct what it found. We now believe Coda complies with all applicable licenses…

The debate is about whether or not the new code qualifies as derived.

They can remove all of the literal code matches from the codebase, but if it was written by having an LLM study the original code and then write something similar, it's hard to argue it's not a derivative work.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#63

Post by ncphillips »

Aurornis wrote: post #62
minimaxir wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The README ( https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda#license ) addresses concerns about copyright in good faith and better than most agentic-driven repos: > After our initial 0.9.0 pre-release (July 2026), community feedback raised that Coda contained AGPL-licensed code. This prompted a full audit of our codebase and dependencies, and steps to correct what it found. We now believe Coda complies with all applicable licenses…

The debate is about whether or not the new code qualifies as derived . They can remove all of the literal code matches from the codebase, but if it was written by having an LLM study the original code and then write something similar, it's hard to argue it's not a derivative work.

Genuine question: if a human did this manually would it be considered derived?

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#64

Post by bawolff »

LPisGood wrote: post #47
bawolff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of it though is that LLMs (especially in novice hands) create code that is more difficult to review and has subtler bugs. Code review is (for many) the least fun part of programming. Like imagine if your hobby was cooking, but you hated the cleanup. If you buy a robot that automates the fun part at the cost of making twice the mess, that is not a good trade off no matter how many extra cookies you end up…

It is probably a good trade off if you sell cookies or if you vastly prefer eating cookies to making cookies.

Sure, and that probably explains why companies (who sell software) love AI while hobbyists who just like to program hate it.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#65

Post by nemomarx »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #56

I don’t understand the world of people who have this degree of free time (time / energy) given how much everything costs just to be alive. Maybe they live in a different universe where programming for fun and first principals of “learning” matters. But for the other 99% of humans, costs have gone up 40% due to money printing and anything like this looks like a waste of time.

Hobbies are kind of by definition wastes of time. That's what makes them different than work.

If you only want to learn programming for work then you obviously have a different perspective than people writing chess engines from scratch for fun instead of using an existing one, right?

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#66

Post by matheusmoreira »

podgietaru wrote: post #13

The article just straight up doesn't mention the context of the Github Thread, which is about the guy lifting ideas from other engines and copy-washing them. "Do you genuinely believe changes like cd170a4 make the code somehow not derived from Reckless anymore? It appears to me like it's just trying to obfuscate its origins, to make it easier to appeal to plausible deniability. The reality is, coda 100% has code deri…

> lifting ideas

It's not like ideas are protected by copyright though. Copyright protects the specific expression of the idea, not the idea itself. Anyone can "lift ideas" from anyone else, including proprietary software.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#67

Post by skydhash »

bawolff wrote: post #34
QuantumNoodle wrote: post #4

A hobby is something you enjoy the process of doing, not just the end result. Everybody likes a clean home, but cleaning is rarely a hobby. LLMs expedite achieving the end result. Take from that what you will.

I think part of it though is that LLMs (especially in novice hands) create code that is more difficult to review and has subtler bugs. Code review is (for many) the least fun part of programming. Like imagine if your hobby was cooking, but you hated the cleanup. If you buy a robot that automates the fun part at the cost of making twice the mess, that is not a good trade off no matter how many extra cookies you end up…

> Code review is (for many) the least fun part of programming.

I'm lurking around the OpenBSD mailing list and it seems that code review is where collaboration starts. You send a patch, explain its purpose, people try it out and comment. If it's OK (various factors decide that), it's imported inside the codebase.

The main issue in corporate settings is that the author of the PR wants to browbeat you into accepting his/her changes. Either directly or by appealing to the manager. They don't want collaboration, they just see you as the blocker between them and the "Done" status on the ticket.

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#68

Post by xgulfie »

minimaxir wrote: post #23
podgietaru wrote: post #13

The article just straight up doesn't mention the context of the Github Thread, which is about the guy lifting ideas from other engines and copy-washing them. "Do you genuinely believe changes like cd170a4 make the code somehow not derived from Reckless anymore? It appears to me like it's just trying to obfuscate its origins, to make it easier to appeal to plausible deniability. The reality is, coda 100% has code deri…

The README ( https://github.com/adamtwiss/coda#license ) addresses concerns about copyright in good faith and better than most agentic-driven repos: > After our initial 0.9.0 pre-release (July 2026), community feedback raised that Coda contained AGPL-licensed code. This prompted a full audit of our codebase and dependencies, and steps to correct what it found. We now believe Coda complies with all applicable licenses…

It's so weird that they think they have to comply with copyright in this case, but not in the case of any other license

Re: Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage

#70

Post by recursive-call »

ncphillips wrote: post #63
Aurornis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The debate is about whether or not the new code qualifies as derived . They can remove all of the literal code matches from the codebase, but if it was written by having an LLM study the original code and then write something similar, it's hard to argue it's not a derivative work.

Genuine question: if a human did this manually would it be considered derived?

In my opinion yes. Just like if you watch a Bob Ross episode and copy all his brushstrokes, you have made a derivative (in the literal sense of the word) of his painting.
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