There's a lot of tacit knowledge in programming.

-Why do you cut API boundaries this way? -Why do you change the order of struct fields? -Why do you deliberately insert padding?

Most of it depends on the background and context. Sometimes you add it, sometimes you don't. To understand this tacit knowledge, you need access to senior developers. But their attitude often depends on how promising the student is and what background they come from. On top of that, you don't have to rely on the respondent's mood, authority, or availability.

Programming is fundamentally a field that requires seniors. In my case, I had no such seniors at all. I learned to code by buying codebases from failed companies and studying them. My first job didn't hire me as an employee—they hired me as the CEO of a subcontracting company (because that was structurally more advantageous for the contract). So I wasn't given the patience to learn programming fundamentals gradually. I had to pay penalties if I failed. Most of the projects I worked on were the kind where failure meant bankruptcy for me. Naturally, there was no one to teach me.

Most of my knowledge comes from reverse-engineering the code I purchased.

People say LLM code contains falsehoods, but commercially sold code has always had falsehoods too. Honestly, if we're just talking ratios, LLM code has fewer falsehoods.

In that sense, I still think it's a matter of context. If LLM code is false, was human code ever really true? LLMs do lie. They generate plenty of incorrect code. But humans do the same thing. If a problem comes up, you just look it up then and there. For me, LLMs and humans aren't all that different.

What do you think of modern open-source codebases presently available to the public? Is closed-source/proprietary code that much better?