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Sure, I'm not saying I, a software engineer, cannot do this. I'm saying it's significant onboarding friction. Unless this were a massive differentiator, people
by Schiendelman 4mo ago
Sure, I'm not saying I, a software engineer, cannot do this. I'm saying it's significant onboarding friction.
Unless this were a massive differentiator, people aren't going to be "talking about it" the way GP suggests!
- fc417fc802 4mo agoYou're seriously suggesting that setting up opencode or tweaking your claude code config or etc is too much trouble to be worth saving $50 /mo? That's absurd. Doubly so when the audience in question is already using LLMs so ... just ask your existing LLM for help if it seems daunting.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoI'm not just suggesting that, I'm trying to be crystal clear: it's a gap that probably cuts TAM by 95% or more. Most LLM users are not software engineers. Even those that are don't care enough to muck with their settings to try out a model. Keep in mind I'm not answering the question "Is this hard to install?" - I'm answering the question "Why aren't people talking about this?"
- fc417fc802 4mo agoDoesn't pass the sniff test. Casuals messing around already go to far more trouble to set up openclaw or comfyui or what have you.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoWhat percentage of "casuals"? ;)
- neonstatic 4mo ago"Casuals" just use the web interface from the provider, which Z.ai also has
- donohoe 4mo agoI would broadly agree with this (based on years of dealing directly with user-facing UX and setup steps). Small hurdles, even easy ones, create larger barriers to adoption then you’d think.
- ramraj07 4mo agoThats not absurd. Do you know what software engineers make? Do you know what a Starbucks coffee costs? 50 bucks is nothing for someone in that life.
- skeledrew 4mo agoThe friction is near 0 when you can ask another LLM to set it up for you.
- Schiendelman 4mo agoHere are a few frictions I see that reduce reach, in order: 1) You haven't even heard of it. 2) You have to know to look for both GLM and Z.ai. These are usually in the same article when reporting about GLM is written, at least. 3) You have to understand there could be a benefit in trying it; you have to want to try it for some reason. Their own blog post puts it below Opus 4.8 in each of the three benchmarks they used. 4) You have to figure out the pricing, which isn't obviously in the blog post... 5) When I first went to Z.ai, I got an error popup (not logged in): "You do not have permission to access this resource. Please contact your administrator for assistance." I am using a personal computer... 6) When I typed something in the resultant field and pressed enter, I got "Clear Current Chat? To start a new chat, your current conversation will be discarded. Sign in to save chats" I think today's article helped with 1 and 2, which helps their top of funnel. But they're fighting a big uphill battle.
- cromka 4mo ago> it's significant onboarding friction. It's crazy that apparently writing software without knowing how to edit a single config file is normal now.
- johnnyApplePRNG 4mo agoIt's crazy that apparently doing math without knowing how to do long division by hand is normal now.
- phainopepla2 4mo agoAbsolutely ludicrous comparison
- johnnyApplePRNG 4mo agoIs it, though? I'd argue math is significantly more complex than language.
- bityard 4mo agoThe real question is: should the file be edited in emacs or vim?
- egeozcan 4mo agoFor me it's about tolerance. When I was 13, I could and would customize everything, so much that the computer repair shop told my father that their son "likely is a hacker or something". At 40, I could easily configure claude code to use another model, even if there weren't any official guides with a bit of MITM fun, but I don't want to invest my attention / heavily use something that will most likely break in the near future.
- scotty79 4mo agoYou can ask the agent to change its own configs. Pi does that by default.
- computerex 4mo agoNot really, you can literally have Claude set it up for you.