Alright, I guess I'll take the bait. Not much else going on today anyway.

> I’m pointing out what I believe to be ridiculous gatekeeping.

I am not gatekeeping. I am stating that we collectively exist in a professional caste and that will go away or lose influence if you let it do so. Other professional castes do this exact same brain exercise and that is why they have protections in place.

> Some people try to cling to their specializations and cry “class warfare” when threatened.

I'll be blunt and just state that I am post money and not remotely threatened by this stuff anymore. I am observing that software engineering as a profession is blindly giving away a ridiculous amount of leverage in the world - in the form of dollars and influence, the value of their labor - and more crucially doing it to themselves.

I will be fine whichever way this shakes out, and I don't really have a dog in this fight short of having spent decent time in the OSS space and finding it sad what it is turning in to.

Assuming you're being genuine (which I have a hard time believing because your argument is quite literally a strawman, please read the definition), you're missing the context entirely. You can't conflate small DIY projects done around the house with developing software that thousands of people and institutions rely on. By all means you can go and watch a video on software development, but that does not entitle you to expect that PRs you make will be accepted to any project other than the ones you control yourself.

> I can go on YouTube and get step-by-step instructions on how to safely wire an entire house.

Sure, and I'd be comfortable doing that with my house. I wouldn't be comfortable with some random person off the street coming up and saying to me, "hey, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos about wiring; you should invite me in to rewire your house".

That is the proper analogy here.

I would argue the result depends 90% on mentality. Experience only makes you work faster.

Fun conversation with a high end coder: ME: I would write it from scratch rather than introduce a dependency. It's not that I don't trust people but I just don't trust people to live up to the specific standards for the specific job. HIM: For what I cost no way I could justify that. ME: It looks like a circus this thing of yours. HIM: Keep the secret!