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That is a very strange calculation for me or I missed something. This is an open-source project, so all human contributors cost zero. He does not count himself

That is a very strange calculation for me or I missed something. This is an open-source project, so all human contributors cost zero. He does not count himself as a cost, ok fine and understandable if you don't wanna earn from this project it is kind of an ok look at cost. But if I see it in this relation, because of Copilot his "team" costs now $41.73 a month more than before. But the real cost that would be interesting is time value: Does he really spends less time for the same feature?

otoolep 1y ago
Post author here. Few things. You are right that when someone (a human) submits a PR it didn't cost me anything (short of my time to review it). But those folks are not a team, not someone I could rely on or direct. Open-source projects -- successful ones -- often turn into a company, and then hire a dev team. We all know this. I have no plans to commercialize rqlite, and I certainly couldn't afford a team of human developers. But I've got Copilot (and Gemini when I use it) now. So, in a sense, I now do have a team. And it's allowed me to fix bugs and add small features I wouldn't have bothered to in the past. It's definitely faster (20 mins to fire up my computer, write the code, push the PR vs. 5 mins to create the GitHub issue, assign to Copilot, review, and merge). Case in point: I'm currently adding change-data-capture to rqlite. Development is going faster, but it's also more erratic because I'm reviewing more, and coding less. It reminds me of when I've been a TL of a software team.
- mjr00 1y ago
  > So, in a sense, I now do have a team. In another, more accurate sense: no, you have a tool, not a team. A very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless. If you believe you have a team, try taking a two week vacation and see how much work your team does while you're gone.
  - Nevermark 1y ago
    There is a new continuum. "Team" is just a convenient word to emphasize that "Tools" are moving significantly in the "Teams" direction. The post emphasizes the degree this is true/not. Different people are going to emphasize changing attributes of new situations using different pre-existing words/concepts. That's sensible use of language.
    - otoolep 1y ago
      >There is a new continuum. "Team" is just a convenient word to emphasize that "Tools" are moving significantly in the "Teams" direction. Exactly.
    - mjr00 1y ago
      No, it's clickbait and that's why this submission got flagged, sorry. A team is comprised of people. Being able to prompt an LLM to create a pull request based on specifications is very useful, but it's not a team member, the same way that VSCode isn't a team member even though autocomplete is a massive productivity increase, the same way that pypi isn't a team member even though a central third party dependency repository makes development significantly faster than not having one. If this article were "I get a massive productivity boost from $41.73/month in developer tools" it'd be honest. As it is, it's dishonest clickbait. As the saying goes, there is no "AI" in "Team".
      - Nevermark 1y ago
        That is not a clickbait title. It is normal use of language, and the articles contents are not surprising or misleading relative to the title. Titles don't need to be pedantic.
- patchymcnoodles 1y ago
  Ok, that's cool that you can develop faster now, but as the other comment: it is a tool, not the cost of a team. It still for me a very strange comparison. But nonetheless, thanks for the explanation :).

otoolep 1y ago

Post author here. Few things. You are right that when someone (a human) submits a PR it didn't cost me anything (short of my time to review it). But those folks are not a team, not someone I could rely on or direct. Open-source projects -- successful ones -- often turn into a company, and then hire a dev team. We all know this. I have no plans to commercialize rqlite, and I certainly couldn't afford a team of human developers. But I've got Copilot (and Gemini when I use it) now. So, in a sense, I now do have a team. And it's allowed me to fix bugs and add small features I wouldn't have bothered to in the past. It's definitely faster (20 mins to fire up my computer, write the code, push the PR vs. 5 mins to create the GitHub issue, assign to Copilot, review, and merge). Case in point: I'm currently adding change-data-capture to rqlite. Development is going faster, but it's also more erratic because I'm reviewing more, and coding less. It reminds me of when I've been a TL of a software team.

mjr00 1y ago
> So, in a sense, I now do have a team. In another, more accurate sense: no, you have a tool, not a team. A very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless. If you believe you have a team, try taking a two week vacation and see how much work your team does while you're gone.
- Nevermark 1y ago
  There is a new continuum. "Team" is just a convenient word to emphasize that "Tools" are moving significantly in the "Teams" direction. The post emphasizes the degree this is true/not. Different people are going to emphasize changing attributes of new situations using different pre-existing words/concepts. That's sensible use of language.
  - otoolep 1y ago
    >There is a new continuum. "Team" is just a convenient word to emphasize that "Tools" are moving significantly in the "Teams" direction. Exactly.
  - mjr00 1y ago
    No, it's clickbait and that's why this submission got flagged, sorry. A team is comprised of people. Being able to prompt an LLM to create a pull request based on specifications is very useful, but it's not a team member, the same way that VSCode isn't a team member even though autocomplete is a massive productivity increase, the same way that pypi isn't a team member even though a central third party dependency repository makes development significantly faster than not having one. If this article were "I get a massive productivity boost from $41.73/month in developer tools" it'd be honest. As it is, it's dishonest clickbait. As the saying goes, there is no "AI" in "Team".
    - Nevermark 1y ago
      That is not a clickbait title. It is normal use of language, and the articles contents are not surprising or misleading relative to the title. Titles don't need to be pedantic.
patchymcnoodles 1y ago
Ok, that's cool that you can develop faster now, but as the other comment: it is a tool, not the cost of a team. It still for me a very strange comparison. But nonetheless, thanks for the explanation :).