Everything is decided by favors. If I list something and you delete it I will support you the next time. Non of the guidelines are really relevant to any process. If my team says a source is or isn't reliable you just have to accept it however absurd or bizarre it is. Suck it up.

Programming articles exist because no one bothered to delete them. I've actually joked about it a decade ago.

I use to play this game where I gently rub as many established users as possible the wrong way. That way they will collectively oppose everything i do. The game grows increasingly absurd as the true colors shine though. I do this as an IP editor as I've seen them fabricate excuses to ban users often enough.

Behind my back they write walls of text how to get rid of me. (I wrote some tools to dig into article and user edit history)

But all I do is contribute citations with quality sources, sure I do it in places they don't want to see developed but the decision to have an article was already made, only the real work remains.

The easiest are the articles listed under the fringe category. They are all in terrible shape, sources are easy to find and it instantly enrages the fringe warriors.

Note: You don't actually have to believe something is real to be able to cite a source.

Jimbo is such a fan of tag team editing it can hardly be considered a mistake.

If the wiki followed its own rules and guidelines you could write a guideline for the notability of articles in the programming category.

If you do that now the guideline guardians will tell you with a straight face that no amount of GitHub stars is enough and that no such guideline is needed.

If you provide example articles they will be deleted to prove the point.

One could probably train an interesting llm on deleted wp contributions. There might be more content there than in main space.