Every few years, I hear something like this. And every time, I wonder who is going to believe them, because almost without exception when I purchase organic produce it tastes noticeably better.
Perhaps one could argue "well, that's not because it's certified organic, it's because it's a smaller farm that uses these other crop-growing techniques blah blah blah". OK. Irrelevant. The point is, when I buy conventional produce, and then I buy organic produce, the organic stuff is clearly higher quality. Even better? Go to a farmers market and buy directly from the source.
I've been saying this for forever. Not only isn't it, broadly speaking, true that "users don't care if/how/why…" with regard to how products & services are made, but furthermore: it's our job as craftspeople to make people care! We should be open about the tools and processes we use to make things. Even if it's less obviously artistic than, say, a John Wick movie (where it's undeniable just how much people DO care about the creative process behind it).
It's weird. I still remember 2008, when GitHub's claim to fame was that it was "the easiest (and prettiest) way to participate in the collaborative development of software."
Now they want to end that collaboration, and turn it into automation. Many C-suite executives right now are smiling bigly. Meanwhile, we're leading the exodus. Turns out, we still want the easiest and prettiest way to participate in the collaborative development of software, and GitHub ain't it!
GitHub also serves as a community hub beyond being a code hosting and collaboration platform, where engineers can connect.
In the past, clicking on someone’s profile would simply let you know like “Hey, this guy is pretty good” or “This guy is working on something interesting.” Losing that sense of home would be terrible.
Same. I've been a programmer for over 30 years. I'll be a programmer for another 30 years, sans the LLMs. There's nothing about the technology which appeals to me in the slightest.
I've used and paid for Dropbox for well over a decade. Other than the rare hiccup every few years (usually due to switching machines/OSes or whatnot), it's been rock solid and a true workhorse. I know there are many other options, including iCloud Drive which I use sparingly, but Dropbox is a service I trust. I hope it continues in that manner and they don't destroy their reputation with a woebegone "pivot to AI".
If not…well I don't know what to call this style of writing exactly but I see it all the time on LinkedIn (or some annoying startup landing page) and it's very upsetting to me.
"You asked a simple question. They lobbed a document."
"Your wall of text suppresses dialogue. They can't reply, can't push back, can't clarify. It's a weapon disguised as helpfulness."
"Let it sharpen your thinking, not replace it."
Why structure sentences like this? Maybe go read some well-written novels, a solid essay or two…or at the very least, write in a normal conversational style?
It's also possible that this will become (or already has) a 'standard' writing style of humans. A style has to come from somewhere, and it would be most influenced by the style that you consume often.
People read this style for every single question that they ask nowadays.
Who knows, maybe watercooler chats will also start having higher occurence of the phrase "You're absolutely right" in the not so distant future.
Ah, the classic "But just you wait, the next version will be better!" fallacy.
It's a fallacy because the reality is often not that…in fact sometimes the reality ends up worse. (See "enshittification", a process whereby technology gets worse over time, not better.)
The next version from that vendor. Or maybe the market commoditization.
You’re again conflating the product offerings from the capacity of the technology. It’s like kinetic energy vs potential energy.
The real wait is for the cost in disk space, memory and electricity of pretraining a transformer to be something the equivalent of a raspberry pi can accomplish. Then all the style and design choices of the few current vendors goes away.
Virtually every person I talk to on a regular basis either (a) generally hates AI but uses it in specific ways because of the utility they perceive, or (b) hates AI and won't use it at all.
The idea that "distain for AI" is limited to "one 'elite' or another" is most definitely not borne out by any polling data. "Of course this goes for practically any cause" seems to be an opinion based on air. Many, many people across all social strata (except maybe millionaires/billionaires) are deeply invested in a wide variety of causes to make the world a better place.
Perhaps one could argue "well, that's not because it's certified organic, it's because it's a smaller farm that uses these other crop-growing techniques blah blah blah". OK. Irrelevant. The point is, when I buy conventional produce, and then I buy organic produce, the organic stuff is clearly higher quality. Even better? Go to a farmers market and buy directly from the source.
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