Thanks for sharing this, John. I share your concern about losing the feedback loops that create and improve technical knowledge.
When developers stop participating in these communities, we lose:
Questions and answers.
But also: people sharing what didn't work: failed architectures, edge cases, nuances, corrections, alternative approaches, and the discussions that help us understand why something works in one context but not another.
Over time, this could mean less interaction between people, less up-to-date knowledge, and greater dependence on AI platforms. That worries me even more when those systems are essentially closed black boxes.
Depending on proprietary platforms such as Stack Overflow or Reddit was never ideal either, but at least the knowledge there is publicly accessible, linkable, attributable, discussable, and created through visible human interaction.
Maybe this is part of why I've recently become interested in the IndieWeb. For technical communities, I find the idea quite compelling: developers publishing under their own domains, linking to each other, discussing, responding, and collectively sharing knowledge on the open web.
Maybe that sounds a little utopian, but I'd like AI to push us in that direction rather than the opposite one 😄.
Another side of AI gives me some hope: AI can dramatically reduce the effort required to document and publish what we learn. Countless useful blog posts were probably never written simply because the developer didn't have the time. AI can help turn draft notes, experiments, debugging sessions, or lessons learned into something worth sharing.
Here is a recent example, written with AI assistance (not that technical), but about what I have recently learned about the #IndieWeb: 🌿 Second steps into the IndieWeb.
I guess the healthiest way we can use AI is not only to consume knowledge faster, but also to make it easier for us to contribute more knowledge back to the web 🤞🙂.
Terrance Tao and Gary Marcus shared the same sentiment, albeit for mathematics and AI in general, but the idea is exactly the same concern I have for software development future - garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-dire...
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Thanks for sharing this, John. I share your concern about losing the feedback loops that create and improve technical knowledge.
When developers stop participating in these communities, we lose:
Over time, this could mean less interaction between people, less up-to-date knowledge, and greater dependence on AI platforms. That worries me even more when those systems are essentially closed black boxes.
Depending on proprietary platforms such as Stack Overflow or Reddit was never ideal either, but at least the knowledge there is publicly accessible, linkable, attributable, discussable, and created through visible human interaction.
Maybe this is part of why I've recently become interested in the IndieWeb. For technical communities, I find the idea quite compelling: developers publishing under their own domains, linking to each other, discussing, responding, and collectively sharing knowledge on the open web.
Maybe that sounds a little utopian, but I'd like AI to push us in that direction rather than the opposite one 😄.
Another side of AI gives me some hope: AI can dramatically reduce the effort required to document and publish what we learn. Countless useful blog posts were probably never written simply because the developer didn't have the time. AI can help turn draft notes, experiments, debugging sessions, or lessons learned into something worth sharing.
Here is a recent example, written with AI assistance (not that technical), but about what I have recently learned about the #IndieWeb: 🌿 Second steps into the IndieWeb.
I guess the healthiest way we can use AI is not only to consume knowledge faster, but also to make it easier for us to contribute more knowledge back to the web 🤞🙂.
Terrance Tao and Gary Marcus shared the same sentiment, albeit for mathematics and AI in general, but the idea is exactly the same concern I have for software development future - garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-dire...