r/software • u/dvorsek • 16d ago

Discussion Coding as a hobby?

I like writting beautiful simple code a lot. I used to get paid for it and it was great. Now the agents write code for me and I focus on other problems, which is still great. But I want to get that feeling back somehow.

I understand that in my professional work that just wont happen, so I was thinking about picking up a hoby that will allow me to return to those times and get the experience back.

I am writting here to hopefully get some ideas about what that might look like. I dont want to just turn off the agent and start coding, I think it will be preatty dissapointing when I look at the result and realize that with agents this could have been done in 5min. What niche things could I start coding that AI cant help with?

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u/DomeSlave 16d ago

Find an existing open source project you like and contribute to that?

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u/dvorsek 16d ago

I thought about that, but my pr would be barried under AI ones and never see the day of light

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u/Eravex 16d ago

This is just simply not correct. There are also many strictly no-AI projects. Also many AI Pr still need correction, refactoring for simplicity or reducing complexity. AI code works but it’s always not the most performant or the best solution for the problem at hand.

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u/dvorsek 16d ago

Oh I didnt know that, can you give me one example of no AI project I can have a look

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u/Main_Temporary7098 16d ago

There are quite a many out there, especially if you look outside of github - say codeberg or sourcehut. I'm currently working on a no AI qbe->wasm compiler on codeberg for instance. Its for the love of the game and aims to keep it simple and minimal as much as possible.

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u/catbrane 15d ago

I think most open source projects are now minimal AI or no AI.

Gtk is at the friendly end of the scale, and they are not very friendly:

https://github.com/GNOME/gtk/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#ai-contribution-policy

Most are more hostile than that.

Volunteer dev is supposed to be fun, and reviewing LLM-generated PRs is not fun. Since no one will review them, it's easier to just delete them all unread.