Being anti "AI" has nothing to do with being progressive. Historically, hackers have always rejected bloated tools, especially those that are not under their control and that spy on them and build dossiers like ChatGPT.

Hackers have historically derided any website generators or tools like ColdFusion[tm] or VisualStudio[tm] for that matter.

It is relatively new that some corporate owned "open" source developers use things like VSCode and have no issues with all their actions being tracked and surveilled by their corporate masters.

Please do no co-opt the term "hacker".

Hackers never never had a very cohesive and consistent ideology or moral framework, we heard non stop of the exploits of people funded as part of Cold War military pork projects that got the plug pulled eventually, but some antipathy and mistrust of the powerful and belief in the power of knowledge were recurrent themes nonetheless

So why is it a surprise that hackers mistrust these tools pushed by megacorps, that also sell surveillance to governments, with “suits” promising other “suits” that they’ll be making knowledge obsolete? That people will no longer need to use their brains, that people with knowledge won’t be useful?

It’s not Luddism that people with an ethos of empowering the individual with knowledge are resisting these forces

VSCodium is the open source "clean" build of VS Code without all the Microsoft telemetry and under MIT license.

https://vscodium.com/

> Hackers have historically derided any website generators or tools like ColdFusion[tm] or VisualStudio[tm] for that matter.

A lot of hackers, including the black hat kind, DGAF about your ideological purity. They get things done with the tools that make it easy. The tools they’re familiar with.

Some of the hacker circles I was most familiar with in my younger days primarily used Windows as their OS. They did a lot of reverse engineering using Windows tools. They might have used .NET to write their custom tools because it was familiar and fast. They pulled off some amazing reverse engineering feats.

Yet when I tell people they preferred Windows and not Linux you can tell who’s more focused on ideological purity than actual achievements because eww Windows.

> Please do no co-opt the term "hacker".

Right back at you. To me, hacker is about results, not about enforcing ideological purity about only using the acceptable tools on your computer.

> hackers have always rejected bloated tools [...] Hackers have historically derided any website generators

Ah yes, true hackers would never, say, build a Debian package...

Managing complexity has always been part of the game. To a very large extent it is the game.

Hate the company selling you a SaaS subscription to the closed-source tool if you want, and push for open-source alternatives, but don't hate the tool, and definitely don't hate the need for the tool.

> Please do no co-opt the term "hacker".

Indeed, please don't. And leave my true scotsman alone while we're at it!