The effort police

Earlier today I saw a comment on a post on BBS that was really quite disappointing. The post itself was announcing a new Gemini client, in this case a fully-native macOS one called MajorTom. It's early days for the project, but it looks fun. It also looks like the author is having a ton of fun building it.

I can relate. I've been obsessing over building Rogallo since June this year and it's been an absolute blast. I don't see myself getting bored of it any time soon.

The comment that irked me was this:

Got excited, then I saw the AGENTS.md :(

It’s hard to get excited about new software when everything is just AI generated. I miss the old times when you got excited that someone built something. Now it’s just someone wrote a prompt to make a computer build something.

It comes over like some messed-up Calvinist puritanical work ethic thing. Yes, I know all the arguments against the use of AI, you'll find that I agree with a good few of them; but there's something wild about this "you didn't work hard enough to produce the software I might otherwise consider using so I've dismissed it" attitude. I'd say enough with this nonsense, but it's been going on for as long as I've been writing code and I doubt it'll stop any time soon. At every step in the evolution of software development there's always been someone, sat on the sidelines, tutting and judging because someone is using a new tool that makes it easier or quicker to do a thing.

Yes, we know, back in our day...

What also bothers me is how easily the author of the comment belittles and diminishes the work of the author of the application. Sure, there are some folk who will try and one-shot something with a prompt or two, and who might then pass it off as something carefully considered and designed; but it's unfair, perhaps even dishonest, to attribute that to someone when you don't know what process they've gone through.

If I look at Rogallo, for example... AI has been involved along the way. To be clear: 100% of Rogallo is hand-written code, AI has not been involved in writing any of it. I have used Antigravity as an occasional rubber duck to hash out some ideas, but there's zero chance I'd let it anywhere near the code itself¹. On the other hand, some of the protocol-based support libraries I've built have heavily involved AI. Even then, I didn't just slap in a prompt and run with the result. I did research, I followed the docs, I read more and more about Gemini and Spartan and Nex, etc. I used an agent to get the code going based on my understanding of the source material and I then used that code to support the main work I actually wanted to be doing.

There's zero chance I could have built Rogallo and all the support code from a position of ignorance. None of it was "just a prompt". Looking at what's gone into MajorTom so far, I doubt that's the case there either.

Anyway, back to the main topic...

I also find an element of entitlement in this comment. It reminds me somewhat of the person who felt they were owed something by FOSS authors. Excitement is not something a FOSS author owes you. You are, of course, welcome to go looking for excitement, but if something you discover doesn't do it for you... it's not for you, move on, go find something else. Announcing that you didn't get excited because someone else got creative in a way you don't approve of just makes you look like you want to centre the discussion around you.

Someone made a thing. Someone shared a thing. Someone posted a thing. You turned up and made it about you. That's kind of rubbish. Don't do that.

It's totally fine to not like the use of AI. It's totally fine to want to avoid anything built with AI or which is somewhat AI-adjacent. I get it: it's good to have your own standards and to stick to them. I would suggest, however, that it starts getting problematic when you need to tell someone having fun with their own free time that they're not doing so in a way that meets your standards. Doing that is kind of weird.

Doing that makes you look like the effort police.