<![CDATA[People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling.]]>People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/topic/c4ebba3b-1e82-4728-871e-9c13d04e9b28/people-who-previously-wouldn-t-touch-a-readme.md-with-a-ten-foot-pole-are-now-writing-entire-novels-in-markdown-for-their-ai-tooling.RSS for NodeFri, 01 May 2026 02:40:56 GMTThu, 23 Apr 2026 08:55:59 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:10:18 GMT]]>@rabbit @frederic Oh yeah, that's another whole bag of weird I might just be too "left behind" to fully grasp.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.mei-home.net/users/mmeier/statuses/116455127019749173https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.mei-home.net/users/mmeier/statuses/116455127019749173Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:10:18 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:08:29 GMT]]>@jhauge @frederic That's a very good point!
Why would someone who will never read anything bother to write something? Especially when they overgeneralise and cannot imagine that any other human would ever read anything.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/confuseacat/statuses/116454648005052156https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/confuseacat/statuses/116454648005052156Thu, 23 Apr 2026 15:08:29 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:26:31 GMT]]>@mmeier @frederic I keep seeing this, and I can only imagine that like, half of it is generated anyway, and the rest is the "one more hit bro" effect of the dopamine feedback loop that generating output so rapidly causes, so they just keep adding more and more and more and then they're used to doing whatever to generate that feedback loop.

Couple with how real people don't give the same "you're absolutely right!"-style feedback and repeated exposure to doing this and it becomes their default. Unfortunately.

Welp, they keep vibe coding their shit and they'll keep ending up with music hosting servers that have a paid component but isn't shipped as a separate binary and requires a single line or 2 of code to be patched to enable for free.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://blimps.xyz/users/KayOhtie/statuses/116454482977833119https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://blimps.xyz/users/KayOhtie/statuses/116454482977833119Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:26:31 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:58:15 GMT]]>@mmeier @frederic

Well … at least this documentation is also valuable for humans. And LLMs will have plenty of time to explain it to everyone, according to the asker’s level.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/_RyekDarkener_/statuses/116454371868942257https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/_RyekDarkener_/statuses/116454371868942257Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:58:15 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:02:59 GMT]]>@frederic reminds me of the "Oh no Linux is too complex you have to use the command line" crowd that at the same time dig entire forums to find the REGEDIT magic to make their games work on Windows…

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://m.g3l.org/users/mmu_man/statuses/116453918580184559https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://m.g3l.org/users/mmu_man/statuses/116453918580184559Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:02:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:01:36 GMT]]>@mmeier @frederic @Binder it's a bitter pill. I think a significant difference is that random strangers being helped by documentation and mentoring are not as emotionally satisfying as helping machines that are engineered to be directly grateful and endlessly complimentary. Which I believe is an intentional, manipulative choice by LLM service providers to encourage loyalty beyond reason.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://rage.love/users/perigee/statuses/116453913156983249https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://rage.love/users/perigee/statuses/116453913156983249Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:01:36 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:26:47 GMT]]>@frederic seeing the same - as a person with a mild obsession over readme files I will say this - AI tooling is better at getting through reading of readmes than most devs I worked with.

If I had a dime for each time I've written "It's in the readme" or "This should be in the readme" in chats …

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.green/users/jhauge/statuses/116453776241743295https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.green/users/jhauge/statuses/116453776241743295Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:26:47 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:24:25 GMT]]>@mmeier @frederic That's curious, because that aspect doesn't seem to bug me.

I'm the person who writes documentation of techniques I've derived and shares them with colleagues - none of whom ever seem to return the favour.

However, they will happily video chat about or screen-share what they've done, so it's not the sharing part that puts them off.

My guess is that commitment into stored text scares them, plus the risk of it being critiqued - and they know the LLM won't do that.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/geraldew/statuses/116453766925393979https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://fosstodon.org/users/geraldew/statuses/116453766925393979Thu, 23 Apr 2026 11:24:25 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:27:03 GMT]]>@frederic also, developers who never gave a shit about now bending over backwards to make their forms/controls "AI agent friendly" ... https://mastodon.social/@patrick_h_lauke/116453512115422196

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/patrick_h_lauke/statuses/116453541351887172https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://mastodon.social/users/patrick_h_lauke/statuses/116453541351887172Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:27:03 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to People who previously wouldn't touch a README.md with a ten foot pole are now writing entire novels in Markdown for their AI tooling. on Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:17:12 GMT]]>@frederic Yes. People who couldn't be arsed to write a single word of documentation for their human colleagues suddenly don't have any issue at all with writing miles and miles of instructions for their AI colleagues.

Same for people who previously couldn't find time to mentor a student or new junior colleague because "it's too much work to describe the task in enough detail". For their LLM? No problem at all. 🤷
That's the one that really gets under my skin.

]]>https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.mei-home.net/users/mmeier/statuses/116453266695870491https://board.circlewithadot.net/post/https://social.mei-home.net/users/mmeier/statuses/116453266695870491Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:17:12 GMT