> I guess what we should really ask, is why on Earth should anyone produce anything, if the end result is not one sees it?
>
> And instead, they just read a summary from an AI?
The above is referring to that context. To people wanting others to see things, and that after all is what this whole website's, this person's concerns are about.
So now that this is reiterated, in the context of someone wanting to show things to the world, why would they produce -- if their goal is lost?
This doesn't mean they don't do things privately for their friends and family. This isn't a binary, 0/1 solution. Just because you have a website for "all those other people" to see, doesn't mean you don't share things between your friends and family.
So what you seem to dislike, is that anyone does it at all. Because again, people writing for eyeballs at large, doesn't mean they aren't separately for their friends or family.
It seems to me that you're also creating a schism between "family / friends" and "all those other people". Naturally you care for those close to you, but "those other people" are people too.
And some people just see people as... people. People to share things with.
Yet you seem to be making that a nasty, dirty thing.
The only folks who miss it are the ones who choose to use an llm instead of looking for something different.
I guess my opinion is that you can't "make the horse drink". So instead focus on the groups that care enough to go find your content.
Those people still exist.
If the only joy you got was "the number of people who look at me!"... Then yes, that number is probably going to go down. But I also really do think that's a generally bad reason to be doing an activity.
Again, personalities vary, and I won't deny people (pretty much all of us) crave that type of attention in some form or another. I just think, socially speaking, we're better off with less of that right now.
I don't buy it anymore
Type system support, and the tooling around that support, has gotten SO much more powerful in the last decade or so.
Lots of the warts also got burned off with better support for smart typing, auto vars, duck typing for inputs, etc.
That tooling covers a HUGE swath of bugs that I just don't have to worry nearly as much about, and it makes quick refactoring less painful and less risky.
Going back to Rails feels like stepping back into the dark ages. So many stupid repeated tests/specs for things that should just be in a type system. The tests are slower to write, cover less ground, and are much more brittle.
My tooling isn't as capable, my feedback loop is slower (hard to beat instant type hinting for errors/mismatches right in my editor as I type), and I feel like I'm working with a blindfold on.
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Yes, parts of Rails are great, yes - if you know it already it's a very productive environment. But man do I absolutely hate the lack of interest in type systems from the majority of Rails devs.
It's hard to overstate how valuable it is to be able to change a data structure and have all 29 places you might have broken immediately presented to you with basically no effort on your end outside of some minor type work.
I will pick it every time over having to write 29 specs in rails to get even close to the same safety.