Early-career developers can easily mistake short-term productivity for progress. Growing into a senior also requires context, relationships, judgment, and exposure to how experienced engineers think.
AI helped me publish far more frequently by removing friction from how I develop and refine ideas, while keeping the filters, structure, and review that determine whether a post is worth publishing.
Paying for OSS is not a betrayal of its ideals. The harder problem is funding future maintenance without rewriting the promise attached to what was already given away.