Comment by etra0
5 hours ago
I'm not entirely sure I agree.
While doing the whole project, I learned a lot about reverse engineering itself, the tooling, understanding static vs dynamic analysis, etc. Which was the most fun part of the project itself.
The rate at what people are delivering projects removes that opportunity heavily, even in hobby communities, which is part of the point!
I've always enjoyed the process rather than the end-product, which is why this personally affects me more than other folks I guess. Some people are motivated on producing more, I was more motivated by the learning process behind it, and those two things aren't compatible, so speed is winning the race, sadly, even if you're not profit motivated. I admit I'm a bit more of a doomer, I still use AI tools at work, but I guess it was time to search for hobbies that are not related to programming anymore.
But why does someone else delivering faster deprive you of the opportunity to learn these things anyway? Can't you just... not look at what they've done?
It helps to be able to learn as you go, because the end product is motivating, and the learning is fun.
I will corroborate that AI and pressure even in hobby spaces (like game modding) to ship faster if only to preempt a crappier implementation from gaining traction is making it harder to feel motivated to make something because there’s no time to also enjoy the technical puzzle or to really pay attention to excellence in the details.
I’m not really lamenting a bygone era, just saying that the feeling of programming for a hobby has also changed and the parts that are fun don’t line up as well anymore, so I do less of it now.
I still don't get where the pressure comes from. Ultimately, the only target audience of a hobby programmer is themselves. There is never a reason to rush things, because your only stakeholder - yourself - is fine with whatever your only developer - also yourself - does. You always have all the time you'd ever want for the technical puzzles because there are never any deadlines except self-imposed ones.
Unless you mean your hobby is other people using your software, rather than programming for the sake of programming in the literal sense. In which case, yeah, sucks to be beaten by AI on all fronts at the same time.