Before Stackoverflow, people were answering questions on USENET newsgroups without any award of points.
And before USENET and the internet, hobbyists would gather to trade advice on building home computers. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_Club
The common theme isn't the points... it's that people like to be helpful and share knowledge.
>Open source is another one: here’s my code that I’ve worked so hard on, spent countless hours on - please have it for free, my labor is worthless.
There are multiple motivations for open source. In my case, I did it because I could get more value from the community's enhancements than the "free code" the community got from me.
>It’s like they’re actively seeking to bring their own value down.
Neither of your 2 examples look like erosion of labor value. On the contrary, it shows that not every activity associated with programming has to be driven by the exchange of money.
Or, at least, it's only "labor" in the same sense that literature or painting is labor.
Does it seem strange to you that writers or painters would want the world to see their work, even for free? It doesn't seem strange to me.
Programming is the same.
What about this discussion we are having right now on here about this topic?
Why bother just for useless upvotes? No one is even paying me to think about this.
I can't agree with this. Programming can be like literature. It can also be like writing copy for a bad travel brochure.
It's true that software developers need to eat too but we need to figure out a way to do so without making the world more cumbersome, transactional, and shitty.
I’d estimate something like 99% of all software development (especially, perhaps, open source) is either for toys or else actively harmful. “Betterment of the species” indeed.
How do you reason? Are Linux, sqlite, LLVM, or OpenSSL actively harmful? KDE? Blender? Those are obviously not "toys" and each seems genuinely helpful and useful to me.
If software engineers want to contribute in that way, they should support the research efforts of individuals in the areas I mentioned. Those projects are meaningful and impactful. But they're a tiny fraction of software developed.
It's simply an incredibly ignorant conceit to fancy oneself as providing even small impact simply because one writes some software.
If you can't understand why someone would decide to offer their help for free then at least try to be thankful.
Basically what motivates good engineers is a good problem. If we can meet our basic needs we give the rest away for free. Companies/entities have been using/exploiting this for years. The gamification points are lame (I agree) but I believe there is a general desire to contribute to the common good and give back to the community.
https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/philip-glass-on-co...
That's weird logic. Presumably you wouldn't create something you consider worthless - you'd create it because you needed it.
When I participated on Stack Overflow, for me it was a combination of learning a lot by answering other people's questions and getting a kick out of demonstrating my expertise.
Just take my day today: interpreting the client's specs and internally communicating and planning a minor change in the context of a few parallel release paths, discussing a few tweaks to a piece of code with a colleague carefully weighing effort, impact on partially rolled out tests, and future flexibility (making best guesses as to where things are going), and analysing / fixing an issue in a piece of code which design delicately balances simplicity, robustness and performance.
Call me naive but I don't see an AI taking over before reaching (or nearing) general AI. Nor do I see how someone that's not a competitor already become one just by having access to Stack Overflow, or even a tenfold of it.
Open source is a great way to market yourself. If I have some really valuable code, then I'll keep it for myself. If I think it would be more useful and gain traction as an open source project then I might publish it and in that way position myself as the top expert on that software.
A lof of businesses are actively using, publishing and contributing to open source. Not because they don't want to make money, but because it's the way to make money.
The opposite is true. Analogy: Volvo invented the three point seatbelt. To maximize the value of the invention, they gave it away free to use.
Mass delusions are easy to propagate as they require little emotional nuance; a salute, tattoo, incantation… those used to be enough to bind large groups.
Groups are out though. We’re leaning into enabling humans as atomic agents and automating away the utilitarian social obligations, and work of biological survival to get there.
Look at stackoverflow for example. Thousands of programmers giving away their professional advice, spending their valuable time…for what exactly? Imaginary internet points?
Open source is another one: here’s my code that I’ve worked so hard on, spent countless hours on - please have it for free, my labor is worthless.
It’s like they’re actively seeking to bring their own value down.