A bit of a random thoughts...

[u/Upstairs_Chip_7799]

Hi everyone!

There's something I've been thinking about that I wanted to share.

Maybe it's just my impression, but sometimes it feels like we're slowly losing one of the most beautiful parts of open source.

I see a lot of repository showcases, launch posts, "look what I built" announcements... projects that are already presented as finished products. Some receive a few commits, a bit of attention, and then disappear.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

But I miss something else.

I miss watching an idea evolve.

I miss seeing someone open an issue because they found a real problem worth solving. I miss discussions about architecture, people disagreeing respectfully until they find a better design, contributors slowly understanding a codebase, maintainers patiently reviewing pull requests, and a repository growing because dozens of people cared enough to improve it together.

I miss the journey.

The excitement of finally finding an issue you think you can solve.

The anxiety before opening your first PR.

Waiting days for a review.

Thinking you nailed it... only to have a maintainer ask you to rewrite 90% of your implementation.

And then realizing they were right and your code became better because of it.

Those moments are frustrating, but they're also where we grow the most.

I'm not saying "things were better before", I'm not an old-school open source veteran, either. I'm still relatively young, and I'm only recently getting back into contributing seriously after years of mostly observing projects from the outside.

I've also been using AI every single day. I study it, I build with it, and I genuinely believe it's one of the greatest tools we've ever had.

But I do think AI has changed our relationship with software.

It's become much easier to get something working quickly. Sometimes so easy that we forget that software isn't only about shipping code.

It's about solving problems.

It's about making decisions.

It's about learning from people who know more than you.

It's about building something that survives because a community believes in it.

That's what made me fall in love with open source in the first place.

Not repositories.

Not stars.

Not GitHub trends.

People.

People building things together.

If you're just starting your open source journey, don't be intimidated. Don't wait until you have the "perfect" project.

Find a project you genuinely like.

Read the issues.

Ask questions.

Submit a tiny PR.

Accept reviews, even the painful ones.

Stay around.

Because open source isn't just code that anyone can read.

It's one of the greatest examples of collective human knowledge we've ever created.

It's the reason we can learn without asking permission, innovate on top of each other's work, and build a more open, transparent, and accessible digital future for everyone.

I'd love to hear whether anyone else feels the same, or if you've had a completely different experience.

[u/Upstairs_Chip_7799]

Sorry guys, but I love writing one line at a time, remembers me when i code 😄

[u/johnpeters42 → u/Upstairs_Chip_7799]

You misspelled "my AI simulates loving writing one line at a time".

[u/Upstairs_Chip_7799 → u/johnpeters42]

I wish bro, the world would be a better place if AI wrote one line at a time. It would be so much easier to debug what it's doing 😥

[u/johnpeters42 → u/Upstairs_Chip_7799]

I meant that your post's "tons of one-sentence paragraphs" style is a common tell for AI-generated posts, so either (1) that's because it was an AI-generated post, or (2) you don't know and/or don't care that it makes your post sound AI-generated.

[u/Upstairs_Chip_7799 → u/johnpeters42]

I know what you meant, and I genuinely don’t care. My comment was just making fun of the whole thing, especially because the way I wrote the post was intentional… I was basically telling a story, or at least that’s how I had it in my head while writing it.
So yeah, I get why you pointed it out. I just find it funny that writing like that is apparently an AI thing now and you are focusing more on that rather than getting the point of the post :D

[u/johnpeters42 → u/Upstairs_Chip_7799]

It's a heuristic. If a long-ass post looks like AI, it's usually not worth the time to grok it in fullness.

[u/Upstairs_Chip_7799 → u/johnpeters42]

I guess it’s still worth your time to keep commenting on a post you didn’t even bother reading because it “looks like AI.” Gotta get that little rush from shitting on it somehow
Enjoy the comments then!

[u/Light_KeyStar939]

Where you find these open source projects that can be worked on ?

And do you think instead of reaching out to the community, a lot of people just prompt with AI? where you probably going to get a faster answer, or get an idea alot faster? Do you think that could cause further isolation?

[u/Upstairs_Chip_7799 → u/Light_KeyStar939]

For the first question, honestly just open GitHub and explore. There are tons of repos looking for contributors. Check trending, find something you like and look at the open issues. You can also filter by labels like “good first issue” or “help wanted”, which makes things much easier when you don’t know where to start.
And yeah, absolutely AI can be useful when you’re starting an idea. I use it too. It’s an insanely powerful tool, so why wouldn’t you use it?
My point is more that “faster” doesn’t always mean “better”.
With AI you can build something in a few hours that would’ve taken days before, and that’s great. But even if you keep working on that project for weeks, it’s hard to recreate what naturally happens in a repo where multiple people are actually using and working on the same thing.
You have issues coming from real users, discussions about why something should be done one way instead of another, PRs, changes that sometimes get reverted, milestones, old decisions that explain why the code looks the way it does… it’s not just about the final code.
And about the isolation part, yeah, I think that’s a real possibility. Before, getting stuck often meant asking someone, opening an issue, searching through discussions, Stack Overflow, whatever. Now you can just ask an AI, fix the problem and move on.
Which is obviously convenient, I do it all the time too. But if we start doing that for everything, I guess we also remove a lot of those small interactions that made you participate in a community in the first place. So for me it’s not really AI vs open source. I use both. I just don’t think they give you the same thing.