To me it's less about the aesthetics and more about ergonomics. I still feel at times that the UI, specifically the toolbar, is jumbled together without much cohesion. Or that the interface has been designed to allow entering inputs to someone else's tool, rather than built for me to do what I need.
I'm sure some of it can probably be customized; I don't actually use it that much that I feel the need to tinker.
There is actually a fair bit of drama around this relationship with Collabora, it would seem: https://community.documentfoundation.org/t/vote-revoke-votes-related-to-libreoffice-online-atticiziation-and-freezing-of-repository/13495
Have not used it for programming.
At work, this is to some extent because we haven't decided yet whether to trust sending away our codebase to be potentially trained on.
In general, this is because I find the agressive FOMO-inducing marketting revolting, and because it would be increasing our dependence on big tech companies where I believe we should do just the opposite.
I did use it once or twice to get pointers on topics I wasn't familiar with (e.g., new standards or protocols, ...), mostly just to get a helicopter view and some sources to follow it up when i was in a rush at work. Would not do that on my personal time.
I wouldn't object to using an open-source/open-training, ethically trained, self hosted model.
The vast majority of users don't need "more meat" in their OS. They need stability. Linux Mint works great on that front, I don't see the need to loose focus with multiple new distros. Not everyone needs to jump distro every month.
Disclaimer: i've been using Linux Mint for over 10 years without ever hopping to something else. And I'm a software engineer, not a casual user.
As much as I dislike AI, programming is a field where there's always something for someone to hate. E.g., should we ban C++ articles because there's a lot of Rust fans that hate them?
Your two options are not exclusive. Just create a community to discuss AI programming, cross post to the generic programming community if you think it's relevant, and let people upvote/downvote as they see fit.
This may be KDE Connect. I noticed this happening between my desktop and my phone when installing that app (non KDE desktop). A bit scary at first.
Confusing read. Also using "moms" as a shortcut to imply "non tech savvy people" is not a great choice. Way to antagonize and diminish women for the sake of a punchline.