I started working mostly remote somewhere around 2017, when I had been working full time as a programmer in an office for about 15 years. I may be looking with rose-tinted glasses in the past, but I feel the 15 years working in the office were full of learning with colleagues, while this 8 years working from home feel like they have much less from that.

I do not think this is a problem intrinsic to remote working. I think it's just that I learned collaboration dynamics in an office, and not in remote jobs. I assume that if we all had started working remotely, but then working in offices had become a thing, then we would likely struggle with learning from colleagues in the office.

As LLMs take over the world, coders using LLMs as a virtual colleague (rather than to write code) is one of the LLM uses that catch more my attention. Objectively, this use should be one of the uses I am more OK with; I assume it's quite useful and effective, and feels farthest from most of the issues I have with LLMs. However, this use is the one that fills me more with sadness and science fiction dystopia dread. On top of replacing human interaction with artificial companions, I feel this is bad for our trade, multiplying the effects of other trends that might be hampering the learning of junior coders.

My perception as an outsider of other trades is that other professions have more structured approaches to learning from colleagues, such as mandatory periods working under the wing of veterans before being able to work alone. I think I am a bit jealous of that, although I am told that this might not be as good as I think it is.

However, I feel that we as programmers should make an explicit effort to turn these dynamics. I have limited spare time, but I think we should offer ourselves more to others. Even though the recent trend of people coding live in Twitch confuses me, I feel this might be a step in the right direction.

A space for people to make themselves available to others

Some IRC networks have web clients at URLs like https://irc-network/kiwi/#channel_name that allow anyone with a web browser to join a chat without having to even register a new account. I envision a set of channels foo_{language_code}, such as foo_es, foo_en, where people will to help others can hang out, and people can ask for feedback on their code; both ideas, pairing, etc.