The Programming Tourist | Amr Shawky's Blog

The Programming Tourist

29 Jul, 2026

My first introduction to programming was the blue screen of Quick Basic — bear with me, there is a point to this, I promise. My first real introduction to programming was C++, using the Eclipse IDE, in an introductory CS1 course at university. I was studying Electrical Engineering at the time, and if memory serves, during the first week of the course, I switched majors to Computer Science. My point is, it was love at first sight — and back then, absent the prestige or allure of high-salaried positions, Computer Science/programming required a special kind of love for solving a specific sort of logic problem. The kind that would compel someone to voluntarily spend their free time religiously browsing the forums of CPlusPlus.com, scouring for resources on how to do more — and this is by no means a unique story.

The subsequent booms in software virtually guaranteed high salaries and job placements, which globally attracted increasing numbers of people who didn’t necessarily love programming, but just wanted an opportunity at a better financial situation. I still don’t know if you can truly master something you don’t love doing, but, there was nothing inherently wrong with this ‘occupational immigration’ — though it did have a couple of side-effects.

The field quickly became a lot more populated, and the skill gaps obvious. The new recruits were extremely useful to the wider market, as long as you knew what you were getting. They filled gaps across the software spectrum for companies small and large — jobs that weren’t overly complicated, but nevertheless needed to be done, cheaply. As the professional community grew, we created larger spaces where we could congregate — where new could meet old: StackOverflow, Github, etc., At the same time, hardware got significantly more powerful, so that in many cases (for better or worse), code performance was no longer a big driving factor.

The only problem with this approach was that, you always needed someone technical somewhere in the hiring process, who was able to determine skills and limitations, and make judgements based on the technical scope of work to be done. If this person didn’t exist, this would sometimes have hilarious consequences. I spent the better part of a decade setting up compute infrastructure for software teams, so I’ve met quite a few. Most of the time, they are extremely competent individuals, but sometimes, just sometimes, in an organization where the software department is important but not critical, they will make their first hire based on — I don’t know, degrees, experience, a recommendation? — and leave all future technical assessments to this person. The result is a multiplication of incompetence, because, of course, if this were you, you wouldn’t hire someone else who knows more than you do, as that could potentially jeopardize your position.

Needless to say, I’ve dealt with senior engineers who have taught me new things every time, and other ‘seniors’ who stare blankly at a terminal wondering where to click.

But enough background, let’s talk about today — specifically about LLM’s and their effect on software. The popular consensus seems to be that, the advent of LLM’s has/will close the skill gap between software engineers. My argument is the opposite — that, because the floor for minimum viable software has dropped, the quality and number of software engineers will naturally revert back to what it ‘used to be’.

Open Source

Traditionally, all software was more difficult to create. Producing open-source software meant that, not only did you know how to program, but that you were willing to volunteer time to create, and subsequently share your production to the scrutiny of your peers. The result for consumers was that, for the most part, open-source software was relatively decent. Our antagonist here is the individual who has always been attracted to programming, but not actually wanting to learn it. The one who, as programming became more accessible through online courses, gave it a shot and closed the tab as soon as they slammed into the first DSA course. This particular individual, with the assistance of LLM’s, is now LARPing as a developer, flooding repositories with PR’s and generating Reddit posts advertising their latest vibe-coded abomination. I sympathize with the appeal, I really do, and I don’t have disdain for the programming tourist, but do I find the motivation amusing.

The response to this new phenomenon has been understandably violent. Zig shut down its repository to anything LLM generated, and Codeberg just banned anything “mostly LLM generated”. More will undoubtedly follow with varying justifications, and I believe the natural evolution to the search for quality will be the fragmentation of the...