Last year, I was overwhelmed with joy of collaboration with strangers during 2025's Hacktoberfest. As expected, my Java Demos project went on hiatus with only a few occasional submissions during the year. I did technical update to Java 26 and later to 27, prepared issues for new JEPs and I was counting days towards October 2026.
Then the reality hit me hard - Hacktoberfest 2026 will be different. No more open-source code submissions, folks. You'll use AI anyway, so it is pointless (not said, but I assume that). We will force you to meet each other instead. We'll push you into unsolicited socializing. You'll pretend you like it, because we will make you earn badges for it. That's cool, right? You're happy, right?
Well, no. I am not happy. As an average grumpy introvert dev, I wanted another round of collaboration through code. Again. Despite the danger of having to deal with a lot of impersonal AI slop, I wanted another month when my side project would grow in unexpected pace and perhaps taking unexpected turns. I know it would sound silly, but I'd even say I feel robbed of it.
I know it is not my call. Other people are running the show, and they have all the rights to make the rules. And I am also pretty sure I am the minority here. My project is small and not recognized so I have the luxury to call for more activity. More successful colleagues who have to deal with sheer volume of AI noise are probably happy they avoided spamtoberfest in their repos.
On the bright side, without humans (mostly from India) using their AIs to create PRs into my repository, I was forced to forge a set of skills to replace them. Now all I need to do is to type in /demo-create <JEP_NUMBER> and watch my agent doing the heavy lifting. Even Haiku 5.5 now produces consistent ready-to-merge results in a flash (at the cost of less than 1 credit of my GitHub Copilot subscription). It made me a better AI developer.
So why am I not as happy as I was last year? 🤔
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