I'd say the post deals _strictly_ with the former. LLM code generation absolutely changes community dynamics, what other projects are published, etc.
The problem is, baking something and sharing it with others brings people together, there's smalltalk, catching up, other human stuff. Which in the end is kinda the point of it.
Like your post says, with programming, it's mostly just a race to what achieves the goal, with the exception of demoscene and retro programming, I guess. I started learning ARM assembly so I could make a lisp implementation in it. It will be useless, no one will use it, and an AI could bang one out in a few minutes, but overcoming that struggle to understand things in different ways has to be the goal with hobby programmers like myself, I guess.
The community you share with doesn't need to be online - your croissants aren't going out for delivery but I'm sure your friends and family appreciate them (and you). It can be the same with your software products, if you choose.
If you were running a marathon and, halfway through, everybody just hopped in a cab and drove to the finish line, you'd be disappointed.
So when the audience has moved on to synthetic music (stretching the analogy now!), and musicians have as well, it's still possible to continue on your own, for the pure enjoyment of it. But much has been lost with the global transition.
You talking like what you doing is happen to appease people
While doing the whole project, I learned a lot about reverse engineering itself, the tooling, understanding static vs dynamic analysis, etc. Which was the most fun part of the project itself.
The rate at what people are delivering projects removes that opportunity heavily, even in hobby communities, which is part of the point!
I've always enjoyed the process rather than the end-product, which is why this personally affects me more than other folks I guess. Some people are motivated on producing more, I was more motivated by the learning process behind it, and those two things aren't compatible, so speed is winning the race, sadly, even if you're not profit motivated. I admit I'm a bit more of a doomer, I still use AI tools at work, but I guess it was time to search for hobbies that are not related to programming anymore.
I will corroborate that AI and pressure even in hobby spaces (like game modding) to ship faster if only to preempt a crappier implementation from gaining traction is making it harder to feel motivated to make something because there’s no time to also enjoy the technical puzzle or to really pay attention to excellence in the details.
I’m not really lamenting a bygone era, just saying that the feeling of programming for a hobby has also changed and the parts that are fun don’t line up as well anymore, so I do less of it now.