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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 engageme

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.

acedTrex 2mo ago
> 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.
- frollogaston 2mo ago
  Yep, gatekeep your hobbies! Just not too much. Programming/CS have been good about that so far.
- didibus 2mo ago
  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.
  - xboxnolifes 2mo ago
    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.
    - didibus 2mo ago
      I can see that, but I don't see the negative connotation if it's meant as just saying there are norms, rules, slangs, etc. As long as those are not exclusionary of outsiders. The latter is how I always thought of gatekeeping, you put in place barriers to entry, so that newcomers have a hard time joining or getting involved, and it maintains your authority within the group or exclusive club. Sometimes it can be murky, over enforcement of rules/norms can be off putting, and scare away newcomers. This is the common complaint on StackOverflow, you're putting yourself out there, asking a dumb question that makes you feel dumb already that you have to ask it, and you're immediately barraged and penalized that it is a duplicate, wasn't worded correctly, and so on, norms that you are new too. Makes you want to never ask a question again.
hgoel 2mo ago
To be fair, the decrease in discussion and helping one another online has also decreased some significant amount of negative engagement in the form of nonsensical arguments and frustrating ways of responding to questions (e.g. the biggest complaints with stackoverflow).
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
frollogaston 2mo ago
It was like this with cryptocurrency to a lesser extent too. Suddenly lots of people pretending to have technical background and explaining what a Merkle tree is.
- dgellow 2mo ago
  And telling everyone if they don’t embrace cryptocurrency right away they will be left behind, how you are all limiting human flourishing by refusing to embrace the future, excusing every single negative side effect of the technology — because we have to move as fast as possible. And of course no words on how unsustainable the businesses are, how corrupt it is to have so much power and control into a few really shady individuals

acedTrex 2mo ago

> 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.

frollogaston 2mo ago
Yep, gatekeep your hobbies! Just not too much. Programming/CS have been good about that so far.
didibus 2mo ago
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.
- xboxnolifes 2mo ago
  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.
  - didibus 2mo ago
    I can see that, but I don't see the negative connotation if it's meant as just saying there are norms, rules, slangs, etc. As long as those are not exclusionary of outsiders. The latter is how I always thought of gatekeeping, you put in place barriers to entry, so that newcomers have a hard time joining or getting involved, and it maintains your authority within the group or exclusive club. Sometimes it can be murky, over enforcement of rules/norms can be off putting, and scare away newcomers. This is the common complaint on StackOverflow, you're putting yourself out there, asking a dumb question that makes you feel dumb already that you have to ask it, and you're immediately barraged and penalized that it is a duplicate, wasn't worded correctly, and so on, norms that you are new too. Makes you want to never ask a question again.

hgoel 2mo ago

To be fair, the decrease in discussion and helping one another online has also decreased some significant amount of negative engagement in the form of nonsensical arguments and frustrating ways of responding to questions (e.g. the biggest complaints with stackoverflow).

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

frollogaston 2mo ago

It was like this with cryptocurrency to a lesser extent too. Suddenly lots of people pretending to have technical background and explaining what a Merkle tree is.

dgellow 2mo ago
And telling everyone if they don’t embrace cryptocurrency right away they will be left behind, how you are all limiting human flourishing by refusing to embrace the future, excusing every single negative side effect of the technology — because we have to move as fast as possible. And of course no words on how unsustainable the businesses are, how corrupt it is to have so much power and control into a few really shady individuals