AI-assisted development vs. feature bloat

Recently, I discovered a list of open source software tainted by LLM/AI use. It lists those that allow the use of AI-assisted development and suggests alternatives to them.

Why would someone avoid software that allows AI-assisted development?

There are many reasons, from technical to ethical, but the most important one to me that I don't see mentioned anywhere is this: The initial time and effort of adding new features is much less with AI, and so people keep adding all types of crazy features because they believe it's cheap. Ultimately, you end up with a piece of maximalist software with feature bloat. I don't like bloat.

It's possible, in theory, to have AI-assisted development and consciously avoid feature bloat, but there's a correlation: people who like AI-assisted development usually like maximalism. Those who are concerned with keeping things unbloated usually don't become too enthusiastic about using AI in creating code.

The existence of AI-assisted coding may in fact make the distinction clear and split projects and users into two clear groups in the near future:

• Those primarily interested in unbloated artisan software
• Those primarily interested in having as many features as possible as soon as possible with the least effort

Then, most projects won't be able to stay in the middle and will have to clearly be in one of the two camps to be able to target audiences.

— the end —