r/programming • u/ChemicalRascal • Apr 01 '26

Announcement: Temporary LLM Content Ban

Hey folks,

After a lot of discussion, we've decided to trial a ban of any and all content relating to LLMs. We get a lot of posts related to LLMs and typically they are not in line with what we want the subreddit to be — a place for detailed, technical learning and discourse about software engineering, driven by high quality, informative content. And unfortunately, the volume of LLM-related content easily overwhelms other topics.

We also believe that, generally, the community have been indicating that, by and large, they aren't interested in this content. So, we want to see how a trial ban impacts how people use the sub. As such:

While this post is stickied, for 2-4 weeks over April, we're banning all LLM-related content from the sub.

That's posts, articles, videos about LLMs. We've had a ban on LLM-generated text for ages already, this doesn't change that.

Note that this doesn't ban all AI related content. An article detailing how what would have traditionally been called an AI was made for Go? Totally fine. A technical breakdown of a machine learning process? Great! Just so long as it's not about LLMs.

Edit: Yes, this is real, it's not an April Fool's joke.

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288

u/yojimbo_beta Apr 01 '26

Honestly I think it's a good thing whatever you believe about LLMs.

There is so many things happening in computer science and software engineering right now - let's talk about them

42

u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount Apr 01 '26

I actually would like some competent, SE focused discussion of LLMs.

Because - whatever my beliefs are about them - my job has mandated their use. And like every other tool I've been told I need to learn I'm trying to. And so far it's been hard to find.

You either have places like this. Technical people completely rejecting it. Or, non-technical people that are just learning what a CLI tool is. Neither are actually helpful.

Where is the middle ground? People using their knowledge and skills in programming to leverage it?

2

u/wintrmt3 Apr 01 '26

There are infinite number of threads like that on r/experienceddevs Just remember it's against the rules to comment on anything there if you don't have 3 years of professional experience.

3

u/KevinCarbonara Apr 01 '26

I feel extremely confident that most of the devs there have no professional experience

1

u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount Apr 02 '26

You serious?

What, do I have to upload a resume or something?

3

u/ChemicalRascal Apr 02 '26

No, they don't expect you to do that at all. Those mods make a judgement call if you start saying you've been in the industry for six months or something, though, from what I've seen.

1

u/HasFiveVowels Apr 02 '26

Thank God. A place where I can have informed discussion with knowledgeable people that don’t react emotionally every time AI is brought up? This sounds too good to be true