Introduction

It's been a bit more than 48 hours since we added the Hacktoberfest label to Hopp's repo, and all 3 PRs we received seem AI generated. This made me feel sad, not annoyed or disappointed, just sad.

The Role of AI in Coding

Don't get me wrong, I am not against AI-assisted coding, I use it myself daily nowadays. I like that:

• I don't have to type everything (though the tab completion can sometimes be annoying). Of course, I didn't type all these lines manually.
• I have something to ping-pong ideas with or get faster help on how to "properly" do something in a language.

Also, I wouldn't mind if the PRs were AI generated but the contributors understood what they were doing. The issue here is that it seems they had no idea what the AI did and didn't even read our code.

Missing the Point of Hacktoberfest

The problem with AI contributions in Hacktoberfest is that, in my opinion, these people are missing the point of the event.

The whole month should be about exploring new things (a new project, a new language, a new framework, etc.), collaborating with strangers, learning, and having fun. None of these are gained when instructing Claude to fix an issue or implement a feature.

To me, it feels surreal that with open source we can collaborate with people from all over the world, people we have never met, and create something together.

It's not about having as many contributions as possible, but about celebrating open source and collaboration.

The Creative Side of Software Engineering

Building software is like art to me. We get to create something from nothing with our bare hands (fingers 😅). Something that doesn't exist anywhere else other than our minds. Like a painter, a musician, a writer, a sculptor, etc.

I went to a Picasso exhibition during the weekend, and they had a screening where he was painting in real time. After he was doing it for many hours, they asked if he was tired, and he said, "No, I can continue for much longer, I am just having fun.". This is the ideal feeling people should have when building software. And this is how I feel when I am spending whole days in front of my computer and even forgetting to eat or drink water (though I shouldn't do this).

I get that is is boring sometimes, I feel the same. But I think it was the same for Picasso. I noticed that he was reusing the same faces, shapes, and techniques again and again in this "live" session, which I don't think was fun for him either.

The Risk of Losing Human Creativity

By forgetting this and just focusing on the end goal, we are missing all the fun and killing our creativity. Of course, even before AI, people were seeing software engineering as just a way to make money or have a stable, well-paid job.

Not everyone feels the way I do, which is understandable and makes sense. The problem I see now is that we might head to a world flooded with AI-generated PRs and lost human creativity.

Conclusion

Like someone said: "It is not about the destination, it is about the journey." If you want to discuss this further, feel free to reach out to me on x/Twitter. Also if you want to contribute to the best OSS pair programming app, have a look at our good first issues.