Post #1045976

2026-03-05 08:57 UTC

Q to my fellow #Django maintainers: How do you deal with AI contributions? I believe I can fairly easily detect slop. However, it&#39;s usually dangerously close to code from an inexperienced engineer. How do I make sure not to insinuate and crush young engineers? I want to maintain the wonderful growth culture of the Django community while being mindful about my own capacity.

Replies (3)

@decibyte@social.data.coop 2026-03-05 10:28

@codingjoe@fosstodon.org I think one way of doing it is to start a discussion with them about their solution. Can they explain what the changes do? Do they understand the problem being solved? Observe how fast they provide changes in response to your feedback. Does it look like they're using cruise control? It's unfortunately time consuming. But mentoring young developers not using AI can be as well.

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@sarahboyce@mastodon.social 2026-03-05 10:29

@codingjoe@fosstodon.org I don't have an answer but I'm also concerned about this

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@benjaoming@social.data.coop 2026-03-05 10:37

@codingjoe@fosstodon.org personally, I'd much rather help someone improve *their own* code. Like, I'd rather have my child draw something awful with a pen than use a printer to print a drawing from the internet. I think you should state your rules/preferences in the README so you have something to refer to. Or maybe write your thoughts in a blog post like @davidism@mas.to did: https://davidism.com/school-assignment-open-source/ A bit too AI-positive for my taste.. but Simon Willison published this yesterday: https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/anti-patterns/

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