5 ms·
This is a fairly negative comment, but putting it out there to see if other people are feeling the same thing If you told the median user of these services to
by AJRF 1y ago
This is a fairly negative comment, but putting it out there to see if other people are feeling the same thing
If you told the median user of these services to set one of these up I think they would (correctly) look at you like you had two heads.
People want to log in to an account, tell the thing to do something, and the system figures out the rest.
MCP, Apps, Skills, Gems - all this stuff seems to be tackling the wrong problem. It reminds me of those youtube channels that every 6 months say "This new programming language, framework, database, etc is the killer one", they make some todo app, then they post the same video with a new language completely forgetting they've done this already 6 times.
There is a lot of surface level iteration, but deep problems aren't being solved. Something in tech went very wrong at some point, and as soon as money men flood the field we get announcments like this. push out the next release, get my promo, jump to the next shiny tech company leaving nothing in their wake.
- rottencupcakes 1y agoIf that's true, why do leadership, VCs, and eventually either the acquiring company or the public markets keep falling for it then? As the old adage goes: "Don't hate the player, hate the game?" To actually respond: this isn't for the median user. This is for the 1% user to set up useful tools to sell to the median user.
- greenchair 1y ago[flagged]
- AJRF 1y ago> If that's true, why do leadership, VCs, and eventually either the acquiring company or the public markets keep falling for it then? If I had to guess, it would be because greed is a very powerful motivator. > As the old adage goes: "Don't hate the player, hate the game?" I know this advice is a realistic way of getting ahead in the world, but it's very disheartening and long term damaging. Like eating junk food every day of your life.
- antonvs 1y ago> People want to log in to an account, tell the thing to do something, and the system figures out the rest. For consumers, yes. In B2B scenarios more complexity is normal.
- underdeserver 1y agoWell, we're still early days and we don't know what works. It might be superficial but it's still state of the art.
- zkmon 1y ago>> but deep problems aren't being solved There is no problem to solve. These days, solutions come in a package which includes the problems they intend to solve. You open the package. Now you have a problem that jumped out of the package and starts staring at you. The solution comes out of the package and chases the problem around the room. You are now technologically a more progressed human.
- AJRF 1y agoThis made me laugh a lot at the mental image. This was my experience with Xcode for sure.
- notepad0x90 1y agoIf you like creating solutions, why wait for a problem to show up? lol
- kvirani 1y agoWow. I hadn't thought of it like that but it resonates
- nwhnwh 1y agoLOL, this is so true.
- 3abiton 1y agoI wish this was wrong, but it really isn't. To contrast though, I would argue that is part of evolution? We just want to do things faster or better? Smartphones solved no problems, but they ushered the digital millenium.
- zkmon 1y agoI think most new technologies helped to increase the expectations about what you can do. But overall work did not get reduced. It didn't give me more free time to go fishing, or bird-watching. On the other hand, I got an irreversible dependency on these things. Otherwise I'm are no longer compatible with the World 2.0
- 1y ago
- darth_avocado 1y ago> MCP, Apps, Skills, Gems - all this stuff seems to be tackling the wrong problem My fairly negative take on all of this has been that we’re writing more docs, creating more apis and generally doing a lot of work to make the AI work, that would’ve yielded the same results if we did it for people in the first place. Half my life has been spent trying to debug issues in complex systems that do not have those available.
- phlakaton 1y agoWhat if the great boon of AI is to get us to do all the thinking and writing we should have been doing all along? What if the next group of technologists to end up on top are... the technical writers? Haha, just kidding you tech bros, AI's still for you, and this time you'll get to shove the nerds into a locker for sure. ;-)
- quentindanjou 1y agoIt might not be that wrong. After all, programming languages are a way to communicate with the machine. In the same way we are not doing binary manually, we might simply not have to do programming too. I think software architecture is likely to be what it should be: the most important part of every piece of software.
- skydhash 1y agoYou’ve got it wrong. The machine is fine with a bit soup and doesn’t care if it’s provided with punch card or python. Programming was always a tool for humans. It’s a formal “notation” for describing solutions that can be computed. We don’t do well with bit soup. So we put a lot of deterministic translations between that and the notation that we’re good with. Not having to do programming would be like not having to write sheet music because we can drop a cat from a specific height onto a grand piano and have the correct chord come out. Code is ideas precisely formulated while prompts are half formed wishes and prayers.
- CPLX 1y agoThis is actually my theory of the future. Basically, the ability to multiply your own effectiveness is now directly dependent on your ability to express ideas in simple plain English very quickly and precisely. I’m attracted to this theory in part because it applies to me. I’m a below average coder (mostly due to inability to focus on it full time) and I’m exceptionally good at clear technical writing, having made a living off it much of my life. The present moment has been utterly life changing.
- Fernicia 1y ago>they make some todo app, then they post the same video with a new language completely forgetting they've done this already 6 times I don't see how this is bad. Technology makes iterative, marginal improvements over time. Someone may make a video tomorrow claiming a great new frontend framework, even though they made that exact video about Nextjs, or React before that, or Angular, or JQuery, or PHP, or HTML. >Something in tech went very wrong at some point, and as soon as money men flood the field we get announcments like this If it weren't for the massive money being poured into AI, we'd be stuck with GPT-3 and Claude 2. Sure, they release some duds in the tooling department (although I think Skills are good, actually) but it's hardly worthy of this systemic rot diagnosis you've given.
- crowcroft 1y agoYes, people should be building applications on top of this.
- deadeye 1y agoI'm not sure what you mean. What is the "real problem"? In the pursuit of making application development more productive, they ARE solving real problems with mcp servers, skills, custom prompts, etc... The problems are context dilution, tool usage, and awareness outside of the llm model.
- skydhash 1y ago> The problems are context dilution, tool usage, and awareness outside of the llm model. These is accidental complexity. You’ve already decided on a method and instead of solving the main problem, you are solving the problems associated with the method. Like deciding to go in space with a car and trying to strap a rocket onto it.
- deadeye 1y agoSo what is the real problem in your view?
- tptacek 1y agoWhat is a "deep problem" and what was the cadence with which we addressed these kinds of "deep problems" prior to 2023, when ChatGPT first went mainstream?
- skydhash 1y agoFor a very tiny slice of these deep problems and how they were addressed, you can review the usenix conferences and the published papers there. https://www.usenix.org/publications/proceedings https://www.usenix.org/publications/proceedings
- tptacek 1y agoI've been a Usenix reviewer twice, once as a program chair (I think that's what they call the co-leaders of a PC?). So this doesn't clarify anything for me.
- skydhash 1y agoTo out it more clearly. You take a domain (like OS security, perfomance, and administration) and you’ll find those kinds of problems that people feel important to share solutions with each other. Solutions that are not trivially found. Findings you can be proud your name is attached with. And then you have something like the LLM craze where while it’s new, it’s not improving any part of the problem it’s supposed to solve, but instead is creating new ones. People are creating imperfect solutions to those new problems, forgetting the main problem in the process. It’s all vapourware. Even something like a new linter for C is more of a solution to programmer’s productivity than these “skills”
- tptacek 1y agoOK: I think I have decisively established my Usenix bona fides here, and I'm repeating my original question: what is the cadence at which we resolved "deep question" prior to the era of LLMs? (It began in 2023.)
- solsane 1y agoI do not feel the same way. This looks easy to use and useful. I don’t think every problem needs to be a ‘deep problem’. There’s so many practical steps to get to > People want to log in to an account, tell the thing to do something, and the system figures out the rest. At a glance, this seems to be a practical approach to building up a personalized prompting stack based on the things I commonly do. I’m excited about it.
- micromacrofoot 1y agoThese are all tools for advanced users of LLMs, I've already built a couple MCPs for clients... you might not have a use for them... but there are niches already getting a lot out of them
- ip26 1y agoHypothetically, AI coding could completely absorb all that surface level iteration & posturing. If agentic coding of good quality becomes too cheap to meter, all that is left are the deep problems.