I started on dev.to because it seemed like a good place to engage with a tech community that didn't feel gamified and ad-ridden.
Then so many flood accounts posting patently incorrect ill-applied CompSci 101 concepts started appearing. Then the scam accounts. And the short posts designed to funnel to Medium and other sites for monetization.
And of course now nearly every sponsored event is some AI slopfest challenge.
I started computing because I like building stuff and solving problems. Things that would remain, skills of my own I could take forward.
AI has this tendency, both in programming and in art/writing to promise this: you can get the aesthetic for free, so long as you don't care about the craft. You don't need to get it, just continue paying a subscription, don't sweat the rest.
It's the microwave freezer meals of our domain; where some of us came to cook, the industry just wants us to consume and dispose of. People using it at home is bad enough, and that'stheir choice; but then restaurants start doing it - and suddenly even the professionals aren't even cooking.
I had a chat recently with an AI programming enthusiast, their take was that software made predominantly with AI didn't so much need maintaining, just regenerate new software. Imagine that! Disposable software! Draining how much freshwater, burning how much fuel, every time you need tk regenerate a website for a customer?
What the actual duck.
I am done here, Dev.to . It was a nice idea. I'm sure the community will grow, and I'll be a dinosaur fossil, and all that.
I'm just so sorry it happened.
Top comments (1)
If you feel like a dinasaur fossil developer on DEV.to, you're not alone. But I think it's still above average when there is so much slop on the web, but then again, "90% of everything is crap" was said about low quality printed books, nearly fifty years ago. Don't chat. Filter.
Online Community Demise and why DEV is Different (at least a little bit, I hope)
Ingo Steinke, web developer γ» Feb 2
P.S. I find it's especially funny and sad how a developer community keeps discussing claim why or why not all developers will be replaced by AI or must adopt AI tools as if our industry didn't have more important problems to solve. So, yes, maye I've also become an "old man yelling at the sky" but I hope that's still not the case.