Thread

1. gbjcantab · 1785957440 · focus · HN ↗

   What’s missing here is an understanding of the negative effect the rise of AI has had on programming communities overall: both the decrease in positive engagement as people have moved from discussing things and helping one another online to chatting with AI, and the increase in negative engagement. The amount of low-energy abandonware being “shared” into these communities makes it really hard to filter out the signal from the noise.

   So at least in my experience, it’s not about gatekeeping as much as it’s about keeping the experience bearable for the existing hobbyist community.

   1. acedTrex · 1785958104 · focus · HN ↗

      > So at least in my experience, it’s not about gatekeeping as much as it’s about keeping the experience bearable for the existing hobbyist community.

      Keeping the experience bearable BY gatekeeping. That is the point, gatekeeping is not inherently a bad thing. It's a required thing in many circles.

      1. didibus · 1785987742 · focus · HN ↗

         Is it gatekeeping in this case? Would they not allow beginners to join and learn? Are they not fully sharing the knowledge to anyone who's interested to learn it?

         To me, it amounts more to disapproving showing up to a handmade sweater community and showing off your machine made sweaters, or maybe a machine made sweater you added a handful of stitches too yourself. It's like not realizing that the community wasn't about cool looking sweaters, but about hand-made cool looking sweaters.

         Having said that, there might be another community that's more about cool looking sweaters, and new machine techniques that deliver really nice looking sweaters would be of interest to them. I actually think it's what is happening a bit in programming, there are niche that remain more about the manual programming, and others that are about any process that can lead to better outcomes.

         1. xboxnolifes · 1786007153 · focus · HN ↗

            The term gatekeeping gets thrown around so much now that I feel like ive forgotten what it even means. What they are doing is having rules. All communities above a certain size need rules to maintain structure. Idk if that is or isnt gatekeeping, but it is definitely using rules to maintain their identity.

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