If we don’t cease to assist one another, what will we turn into?

Yesterday, I obtained this e mail as a response to You Can’t Vibe Code Love. It’s such a exceptional and highly effective assertion that I requested permission to share it right here, in its entirety, with private info redacted:

Hey Jeff,

Hope you and your loved ones are doing nicely.

Just jogging your reminiscence; I reached out to you (and John Carmack) about how troublesome interviewing had turn into regardless of me being a stellar engineer at my work. You supplied some phrases of knowledge, wrote me a postcard, which I nonetheless have, and stickers (which my youngsters cherished).

I took a management coordination function in Tokyo, and it freed me from the interview course of I hated, and I’m nonetheless programming. Through the general public college right here my household discovered our method right into a group, which brings me to why I’m writing.

I’ve been fascinated by Stack Overflow drying up and actually; I really feel profoundly unhappy.

2013 I used to be lively responsibility within the Air Force. Simultaneously I used to be additionally going to school full time remotely. I used to be deployed in Zamboanga Philippines. The Zamboanga Siege occurs. Over 100 folks killed, 120,000 civilians displaced. It was warfare in a populated metropolis the place no person ought to have each been caught up in that to start with. For 3 weeks this went on.

I used to be nonetheless doing school. I nonetheless had homework, exams, initiatives. All of that wanted to be completed.

With every little thing taking place round me, lacking my initiatives and homework turned an enormous danger. Everyday was a battle to do my job and assist these folks, and do my college. I’d cry lots my textbooks not sleeping. The smoke from the burning metropolis would come within the cracks of the buildings I labored and lived in.

I had a Microsoft Surface as a result of it was excellent for somebody who was flying round with gear on automobiles that vibrated on a regular basis. I swapped the plate out from my vest and slid in my Surface in order that I might nonetheless do my homework if we needed to depart. That’s how essential this was to me.

Sometimes I’d get caught, and I wanted somebody to only nudge me in the precise course.

I really come from a household with a couple of software program engineers. I’ve associates who have been software program engineers. I reached out for assist. The customary response from everybody fell between ignoring me or telling me I must “do it myself”.

You know who did assist me? Random strangers on Stack Overflow. People who had nothing to realize from serving to me different than simply making an attempt to assist somebody in want.

That meant a lot to me. I felt a connection to folks via a group.

And it meant the global community.

An LLM would have completed precisely what I wished again then. But wouldn’t it have given me what I wanted?

At the time, I wanted to know anyone cared sufficient to assist me.

You, your colleagues, and random strangers within the Stack Overflow Community, actually helped me. It was greater than answering my questions. You gave me your time. That made me really feel like I mattered. The truth my questions might assist different folks in my predicament made me really feel like I used to be a part of one thing.

An LLM cannot try this.

So after I watch communities hole out, changed by one thing that offers solutions however would not give me a single thought… I get depressed. Because we’re shedding one thing that was all the time there however I did not discover. It’s like shedding gravity.

Thanks for every little thing.
If you ever end up in [city] I’d like to say thanks personally.

Hope all is nicely,
D

Perhaps the LLMs are a reminder that we should always make an additional effort to domesticate relationships with one another and kind communities on-line – communities that belong to us, not some billionaire. Communities the place we commonly cease to assist one another, as a result of that is how we study too. And if we don’t cease to assist one another… what will we turn into?