4 ms·

100%. I know I’m in the “get off my lawn” phase of my career when I see things like MCP and LangChain, but know I would have been excited about them earlier in

100%. I know I’m in the “get off my lawn” phase of my career when I see things like MCP and LangChain, but know I would have been excited about them earlier in my career.

soulofmischief 2y ago
LangChain is an objectively terrible Frankenstein's monster of an API. If you were a good developer in your youth, you'd have still held it in contempt, and treat MCP with caution. The MCP API is pretty bad, too, it's just that a paradigm is starting to emege regarding modularity, integration and agentic tooling, and MCP happens to be the only real shot in that direction st this particular moment.
- gnatolf 2y ago
  Could you elaborate on your issues with LangChain? We're kinda headed towards using it as it seems to be a flexible enough abstraction that is relatively stable to work with, so I'd like to know if I'm overlooking something..?
  - gregorymichael 2y ago
    A lot of folks use it to get started quickly and then realize the unnecessary abstractions are obfuscating the actual hard parts.
  - jinushaun 2y ago
    You spend more time fighting the tool/framework than working on the product you’re trying to build.
  - davedx 2y ago
    A big soup of untyped json blobs and python, all working highly asynchronously in complicated ways. Is this variable available in my agent’s state? Depends! Is it an agent that started an hour ago before you made that other change? Is it in the manager state or not? Did the previous agent run correctly or not? Did something else go wrong?
  - anxman 1y ago
    Cryptic errors that will make you tear your hair out and docs that are constantly changing
- zambachi 2y ago
  How is the MCP API bad? It uses simple and widely available standards-based transports while still allowing custom transport implementations, along with a simple API that can be used easily without any libraries, in any programming language under the sun?
davedx 2y ago
I’m seriously considering getting out of IT because of it
- romankolpak 2y ago
  because of MCP and langchain?
  - davedx 1y ago
    Eh, more the wider cultural effects of them. Vibe coding, everyone now creating kitchen sink apps that do everything under the sun, k8s everywhere, agents everywhere. It feels like a big part of the industry has lost all focus and is sprinting towards some endless vague panacea instead of focusing on solving specific well defined business problems. It’s always been a bit like this but it feels particularly bad since AI hit mainstream coding tooling. Just my 2c :)

100%. I know I’m in the “get off my lawn” phase of my career when I see things like MCP and LangChain, but know I would have been excited about them earlier in my career.

soulofmischief 2y ago

LangChain is an objectively terrible Frankenstein's monster of an API. If you were a good developer in your youth, you'd have still held it in contempt, and treat MCP with caution. The MCP API is pretty bad, too, it's just that a paradigm is starting to emege regarding modularity, integration and agentic tooling, and MCP happens to be the only real shot in that direction st this particular moment.

gnatolf 2y ago
Could you elaborate on your issues with LangChain? We're kinda headed towards using it as it seems to be a flexible enough abstraction that is relatively stable to work with, so I'd like to know if I'm overlooking something..?
- gregorymichael 2y ago
  A lot of folks use it to get started quickly and then realize the unnecessary abstractions are obfuscating the actual hard parts.
- jinushaun 2y ago
  You spend more time fighting the tool/framework than working on the product you’re trying to build.
- davedx 2y ago
  A big soup of untyped json blobs and python, all working highly asynchronously in complicated ways. Is this variable available in my agent’s state? Depends! Is it an agent that started an hour ago before you made that other change? Is it in the manager state or not? Did the previous agent run correctly or not? Did something else go wrong?
- anxman 1y ago
  Cryptic errors that will make you tear your hair out and docs that are constantly changing
zambachi 2y ago
How is the MCP API bad? It uses simple and widely available standards-based transports while still allowing custom transport implementations, along with a simple API that can be used easily without any libraries, in any programming language under the sun?

davedx 2y ago

I’m seriously considering getting out of IT because of it

romankolpak 2y ago
because of MCP and langchain?
- davedx 1y ago
  Eh, more the wider cultural effects of them. Vibe coding, everyone now creating kitchen sink apps that do everything under the sun, k8s everywhere, agents everywhere. It feels like a big part of the industry has lost all focus and is sprinting towards some endless vague panacea instead of focusing on solving specific well defined business problems. It’s always been a bit like this but it feels particularly bad since AI hit mainstream coding tooling. Just my 2c :)