Ooooh, I can answer the title! It's because writing and contributing code is so much easier today. And if you've stopped reading to write a comment about how I'

Ooooh, I can answer the title! It's because writing and contributing code is so much easier today. And if you've stopped reading to write a comment about how I'm wrong you've already misunderstood me. The "graybeard barrier" (which I dispute is a thing worthy of a specific name) is considered a feature. It's hard on purpose. Anything with a low barrier to entry automatically gains an additional significant amount of noise. Case in point, YouTube comments. I've never been in an IRC channel that has been even a miniscule fraction of how asinine the average discord chat can be. The graybeard filter isn't perfect, but it without a doubt lowers the number of drive-by nonsense, and selects for people who are more committed. The worst Or recent drama on LKML doesn't even come close to the venom or stupidity you'll get in GitHub comments. If you're not already committed to linux, and just wanna volunteer something low effort to start, to see if you enjoy it, and see if it's actually worth your time. Why would you do something hard, when there's plenty of easy to contribute to projects on GitHub? I wouldn't. Why are young coders struggling to break through? because they're given the choice, do something easy or do something hard... you don't know if you'll actually enjoy it yet. No sane person would pick the hard one unless they were already bored with the easy one.