3 ms·

We have entered the era of small software, and no one knows what it will grow to. Here's an example: my office has a few cars for employees to use as rentals.

by bloaf 2mo ago

We have entered the era of small software, and no one knows what it will grow to. Here's an example: my office has a few cars for employees to use as rentals. The number is small enough that it would never be worth any serious software dev to build a tool to manage, but large enough that its a moderate amount of work for someone to manage the requests/getting supervisor approvals/schedule changes due to breakdowns. AI one-shot that guy a tool. Its now dead simple, he's got a calendar, automatic emails going to people's supervisors with click-here-to-approve links, rescheduling options, fleet management. It doesn't even look bad. Who cares if its using some un-backed-up sqlite database in the backend, has some placeholder tab for a feature he changed his mind about, or violates the DRY principles a bunch or uses some inferior authentication mechanism. Its an in house tool, isn't mission critical, and it makes his life significantly easier. Basically everyone is now a few prompts away from their own bespoke tools, and only they will be able to judge the benefit thereof. Edit: to tie this more directly to the article, I would argue that this is an example of "infinity-x" coding, because the user was in fact not capable of coding a solution on their own without AI.

sejje 2mo ago
I agree. In my business, I haven't found much area to use code. It's a pub, and we've long been low-tech. Cash register, no POS. I have a little code surrounding my own processes, but mostly it's manual. Hand-entering numbers in my spreadsheet, etc. But what's interesting to me is that now I can probably program an esp32, or create a small mobile app for a mounted android tablet. I was a web dev in the past, and programming hardware was outside my skillset without dedicating some serious time to learning. Mobile I just always avoided--mostly the same reason. Anyway, I've got some CYDs on my desk, we'll see what I can make with 'em. I want a kitchen ticketing system instead of the old hand-written ticket stubs, for starters.

by bloaf 2mo ago

sejje 2mo ago

I agree. In my business, I haven't found much area to use code. It's a pub, and we've long been low-tech. Cash register, no POS. I have a little code surrounding my own processes, but mostly it's manual. Hand-entering numbers in my spreadsheet, etc. But what's interesting to me is that now I can probably program an esp32, or create a small mobile app for a mounted android tablet. I was a web dev in the past, and programming hardware was outside my skillset without dedicating some serious time to learning. Mobile I just always avoided--mostly the same reason. Anyway, I've got some CYDs on my desk, we'll see what I can make with 'em. I want a kitchen ticketing system instead of the old hand-written ticket stubs, for starters.