Developers at a recent Foo Camp said they increasingly want to extract only the parts of existing code they need, and may rewrite them in Rust, because AI agents make generating custom code easy. The discussion was reported by Jesse Vincent from an AI notetaker summary, and the author did not attend the session himself.
According to the summary, several participants argued that the primary artifact of software development may be shifting from executable code toward natural-language prompts, generation processes, and developer skills. One speaker compared Python to assembly language, suggesting that writing conventional code may become optional. Another argued that open source can survive this shift because its core values of peer production, capacity building, and shared specifications do not depend on who or what writes the code.
Vincent warned that maintainers are overwhelmed by uninvited, automated, and often low-quality contributions. Participants said pull requests, repositories, and conferences have traditionally helped contributors connect and gain recognition, and that communities may need new ways to acknowledge participation. Some interaction has moved to Discord and direct messages, but the summary says structured opportunities are still needed.
One panelist raised concern about scientific computing. The panelist warned that AI-generated forks and agent attacks could threaten carefully verified found