>What if the future of computing belongs not to artisan developers or Carol from Accounting, but to whoever can churn out the most software out the fastest? What if good enough really is good enough for most people?

Sounds like the cost of everything goes down. Instead of subscription apps, we have free Fdroid apps. Instead of only the 0.1% commissioning art, all of humanity gets to commission art.

And when we do pay for things, instead of an app doing 1 feature well, we have apps do 10 features well with integration. (I am living this, instead of shipping software with 1 core feature, I can do 1 core feature and 6 different options for free, no change order needed)

I deeply hate the people that use AI to poison the music, video or articles that I consume. However I really feel that it can possibly make software cheaper.

A couple of years ago, I worked for an agency as a dev. I had a chat with one of the sales people, and he said clients asked him why custom apps were so expensive, when the hardware had gotten relatively cheap. He had a much harder time selling mobile apps.

Possibly, this will bring a new era of decent macOS desktop and mobile apps, not another web app that I have to run in my browser and have no control over.

I use AI/LLMs hard for my programming.

They allow me to do work I could never have done before.

But there’s no chance at all of an LLM one shotting anything that I aim to build.

Every single step in the process is an intensely human grind trying to understand the LLM and coax it to make the thing I have in mind.

The people who are panicking aren’t using this stuff in depth. If they were, then they would have no anxiety at all.

If only the LLM was smart enough to write the software. I wish it could. It can’t, nor even close.

As for web browsers built in a few hours. No. No LLM is coming anywhere new at building a web browser in a few hours. Unless your talking about some super simple super minimal toy with some of the surface appearance of a web browser.

"Discuss on Mastodon" "Discuss on Bluesky"

Would love to see a survey showing "Hating on AI" vs "Embracing AI" in relation to where they stand politically

> You get AI that can make you like 90% of a thing! 90% is a lot. Will you care about the last 10%? I'm terrified that you won't.

Based on the Adobe stock price the market thinks AI slop software will be good enough for about 20% of Adobe users (or Adobe will need to make its software 20% cheaper, or most likely somewhere between).

Interestingly workday, which is possibly slightly simpler software more easily replicable using coding agents is about the same (down 26%).

honestly the example he gives there is not convincing.

it's not quite the best example, but when bootstrap and all those css frameworks were first released everything did converge toward that cookie cutter "look" and UI designers/devs everywhere lamented it, but it gave "good enough" results for those that just wanted to get things done. eventually those patterns evolved and laid foundation for a lot of things we do now.

i think the vast majority of software engineers overestimate how much their extra 10% in their special snowflake app actually matters in the day to day. 90% for most people is good enough, esp if you can solve 90% of the actual pain, people will gladly put up with way shitter experiences because literally nobody else wanted to solve it.

not saying ai slop is good, but everything is moving so fast and i'd say still in the "infancy" stage. next/react/tailwind setup is the bootstrap right now. time will tell what comes out of it.

I think this is far too nuanced. I am terrified by what the civilization we have known will become. People living in less advanced economies will do OK, but the rest of us not so much. We stand on the brink of a world where some wealthy people will get more wealthy, but very many will struggle without work or prospects.

A society where a large percent have no income is unsustainable in the short term, and ultimately liable to turn to violence. I can see it ending badly. Trouble who in power is willing to stop it?