{
  "id": 150822,
  "title": "Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are aggressively against LLM usage",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/04/born-against-or-why-hobby-programming-communities-are-aggressively",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-04T20:24:33.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Lobsters",
    "slug": "lobsters",
    "url": "https://blog.fogus.me/llm/born-against.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A recent thread on a GitHub discussion about chess engine development sparked a thought about why hobby programming communities are becoming increasingly hostile toward the development of large language models (LLMs). This sentiment is echoed in other niche hobby programming communities such as OSDev, LangDev, TxtDev, EmuDev, RLDev, the demoscene, and code golfers. The prevailing view within these communities is that the knowledge they work with is hard-won, and the act of running a program is merely a nice-to-have. They believe that mastering a complex domain is the true product, and that the finished code is merely a byproduct.\n\nIn some instances, there was initial enthusiasm for LLMs within these communities, but the enthusiasm quickly faded due to a combination of a lack of deep understanding by the practitioners and a harsh subset of the community that views LLMs as a form of cheating. These communities are known for their rigorous gatekeeping and slow progress, so it seems natural that there might be a desire to gain quick recognition and prestige.\n\nIn these traditional niches, respect is earned over years through active participation, sharing elegant code, genuine curiosity, and deep domain knowledge. The communities are more interested in the understanding of why and how code works rather than whether it even works. For an LLM, the optimal use case would be as a force multiplier for an expert who already understands the domain deeply. However, within these niche communities, the entire process is about learning. Using an LLM to generate a finished product does not make someone a craftsman; it robs them of the process. This is part of my evolving thoughts on LLMs.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}