yicmoggIrl

> If getting people to review code is that hard that seems like a problem for our new AI age. AI coding appears to rely on getting people to review a lot code and assumes those people will catch the errors.

This is precisely what many of us have been repeating incessantly, for ages now. AI is boosting the wrong part of the ecosystem. It only makes the existent bottlenecks more painful.

Many maintainers get exhausted by code reviews, and recharge themselves through coding. The latter is what AI takes away. It demotes engineers to "AI slop reviewers". I don't know why anybody would sign up for that; IMO it leads to immediate burnout.

> the single toggle for all current and future AI. That's a genuine concession to user agency rather than the usual whack-a-mole of about:config flags

My thought exactly! I'm grateful that Mozilla isn't hiding the features behind dark config UI patterns.

> It is impossible to get someone from the project to review my PRs

Sorry to say this, but this is natural. Writing patches is easy. Reviewing them is hard. Writing patches (and getting them accepted, merged) is rewarding and demonstrable (as a form of achievement). Reviewing patches, educating new contributors is sometimes rewarding, sometimes not (it's an investment into humans that sometimes pays off, sometimes doesn't), but mostly not a demonstrable achievement in either case. Therefore there is incentive to contribute, and hardly any incentive to review. This is why reviewers are extremely scarce in all open source projects, and why all sustainable projects optimize for reviewer/maintainer satisfaction, not for contributor satisfaction. As an external contributor, you just don't get to allocate scarce resources financed by some commercial entity with no relation to you.

If you want to become a maintainer, or at least want others to review your stuff, don't start by writing code. Start by reading code, and make attempts at reviewing code for others. Assuming you get good at it, established project members should start appreciating it, and might ask you to implement some stuff, which they could be willing to review for you. You first need to give the real kind of effort before you can take it.

And this is why "open development" is a total myth today. Resource allocation and work (chore) distribution are aspects of reality that completely break the wide-eyed, bushy-tailed "new contributors welcome" PR message. Opening up the source code (under whatever license) is one thing, collaborating with randos is an entirely different thing. Can you plan with them in advance? Do they adhere to your deadlines? Can you rely on them when things break? When there are regressions?

> you get ghosted if you don’t have a @google or @redhat email address and really the only way to become a contributor is to be buddies with someone who works on the project already

Yes, and the way to become buddies is to help them out where they are hurting: in their infinite patch review backlogs. Of course, that means you have to invest a whole lot of seemingly thankless learning, for the long run's sake. You have to become an expert with effectively nothing to show for it in the git history. It's totally fair not wanting to do that. Just understand that a ticket that remains open indefinitely, or an uncalled-for contribution that never gets reviewed and merged, may genuinely be better for the maintainers than taking on yet more responsibility for your one-off code contribution.

> I have considered going to one of the CNCF committee meetings and being like, hey you guys are not accepting new contributions which goes against your mandate

According to the above, I bet that "mandate" is a total fake; a PR move only. It does not reflect the actual interests of the organizations with the $$$, which is why it doesn't get followed.

You are right that those orgs should at least be honest and own up to NOT welcoming newcomers or external contributors.

> one aspect proving the overanalysis is the wild length of the article beyond that point

I agree. I found the style tedious and the length exhausting. I'd occasionally read pieces from the author, and now I expected better. :/

> the outcome is psychologically intolerable [...] People do not argue with conclusions, they argue with perception [...] accepting it would force a reckoning they are not ready for

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Or perhaps, a form of grief.

> denying the shift does not preserve meaning

I think you meant to write:

"denying the shift does not preserve sustainability"

as "meaning" need not be preserved by anything. The idea here is that meaning -- stemming from the profession being supplanted -- is axiomatic.

And with that correction applied, I agree -- to an extent anyway. I hope that, even if (or "when") the mainstream gets swayed by AI, pockets / niches of "hand-crafting" remain sustainable. We've seen this with other professions that used to be mainstream but have been automated away at large scale.

> reviewing is so much harder than writing

This is what reams of the AI proponents fail to understand. "Amazing, I don't have to write code, 'only' review AI slop" is sitting backwards on the horse. Who the heck wants to do that?

This. The only thing AI will do, at the societal level, if it truly succeeds, is insanely amplify the power imbalance we already suffer under. Thinking that the benefits of AI will be "democratic" is staggeringly naïve.

It's obvious that AI, if it succeeds, will be primarily used to make people, even as physical beings, redundant.

From TFA:

> the more people get fired, the more political pressure there will be to vote for those who will guarantee a certain degree of protection

This is daydreaming. Just look at the US. "Political pressure" is not a thing.

There will be war.

Excellent comment (even "mini essay"). I'm unsure if you've written it with AI-assistance, but even if that's the case, I'll tolerate it.

I have two things to add.

> This is not a moral failing. It is a psychological one.

(1) I disagree: it's not a failing at all. Resisting displacement, resisting that your identity, existence, meaning found in work, be taken away from you, is not a failing.

Such resistance might be futile, yes; but that doesn't make it a failing. If said resistance won, then nobody would call it a failing.

The new technology might just win, and not adapting to that reality, refusing that reality, could perhaps be called a failing. But it's also a choice.

For example, if software engineering becomes a role to review AI slop all day, then it simply devolves, for me, into just another job that may be lucrative but has zero interest for me.

(2) You emphasize identity. I propose a different angle: meaning, and intrinsic motivation. You mention:

> economic value of programming is increasingly detached from human identity

I want to rephrase it: what has been meaningful to me thus far remains meaningful, but it no longer allows me to make ends meet, because my tribe no longer appreciates when I act out said activity that is so meaningful to me.

THAT is the real tragedy. Not the loss of identity -- which you seem to derive from the combination of money and prestige (BTW, I don't fully dismiss that idea). Those are extrinsic motivations. It's the sudden unsustainability of a core, defining activity that remains meaningful.

The whole point of all these AI-apologist articles is that "it has happened in the past, time and again; humanity has always adapted, and we're now better off for it". Never mind those generations that got walked over and fell victim to the revolution of the day.

In other words, the AI-apologists say, "don't worry, you'll either starve (which is fine, it has happened time and agani), or just lose a large chunk of meaning in your life".

Not resisting that is what would be a failing.

(what a coincidence: I'm listening to Dream Theater's "The Great Debate" right now!)