11 ms·
IBM Bob
- m_w_ 1mo agoThe review that "IBM Bob isn't just another autocomplete tool" tells you everything you need to know about this product. lol.
- colesantiago 1mo agoI never thought the day that IBM would make complete slop. But it is IBM after all.
- Geonode 1mo agoI bet this will be as successful as Microsoft Bob.
- dmd 1mo agoMy guess is absolutely nobody on the team that made this is even old enough to remember Microsoft Bob.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- quietsegfault 1mo agoI used Bob extensively at an IBM acquisition, it was absolutely dreadful. Bobcoins.
- brk 1mo agoThis can only mean that IBM Clippy is next.
- a012 1mo agoNobody got fired for using IBM Bob
- someguyiguess 1mo agoPretty sure a lot of people got fired over Microsoft Bob though
- hn_throw2025 1mo agoWell, you could say Melinda got a big promotion for a while.
- pestatije 1mo agoNobody who got fired uses IBM Bob
- glitchc 1mo agoCan we say it's Bob's fault, though? Bob did it, not me.
- a012 1mo agoYou can
- archonis 1mo agoNope, but they'll probably get laid off at some point to boost share price.
- antonvs 1mo agoShould have been IBM Tom, after legendary IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson. But perhaps they didn't want to sully his name.
- vablings 1mo agoIBM already have IBM Watson which is probably named after the CEO
- antonvs 27d agoWell done on understanding the reference.
- vunderba 1mo agoAs somebody already mentioned, they already had a big product named after their CEO. IBM Watson was the next big thing after Deep Blue, and it went pretty viral after defeating Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy back in ~2011. It was a bit of a market play and of course has since been completely upstaged by the invention of LLMs, but it still definitely got them the attention they wanted at the time. https://www.ibm.com/history/watson-jeopardy https://www.ibm.com/history/watson-jeopardy
- antonvs 1mo agoYes, I know, I got a job offer to work in the Watson research lab around that time, at the T.J. Watson facility. I declined because they weren’t remote-friendly, among other things. But IBM Tom would at least have a rationale. WTF is IBM Bob and why does it have the same name as an old Microsoft product?
- DonHopkins 1mo agoIBM Wat?
- antonvs 1mo agoSeconded
- saberience 1mo agoThis is embarrassing. It would have been better to release nothing than this.
- znpy 1mo agoLost opportunity to call it Hal
- criddell 1mo agoI'm surprised they didn't use Watson.
- andsoitis 1mo agoThey already have an AI product line dubbed Watson: https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- bob_builder99 1mo ago[dead]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- bob1029 1mo agoI like how the solitary review is word salad.
- mrbluecoat 1mo agoTotally reminds me of "HP Offers 'That Cloud Thing Everyone Is Talking About'" https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8
- joleyj 1mo ago1000
- dyzone 1mo agoHow you doing fellow kids?
- azinman2 1mo agoSo good
- kingleopold 1mo agoyet hp exist after decades, just a terrible printer corp going long term is insane really
- nateglims 1mo agoI suspect their enterprise computer business creates more revenue than printers.
- zimbu668 1mo agoPrinters are just a loss leader for toner.
- JAlexoid 1mo agoIf you put 90% of the electronics into the cartridge and the printer box is just a paper feeder - that's not exactly surprising.
- actionfromafar 1mo ago
- Ciantic 1mo agoThis sounds a lot like Spotify's XIRP. They managed to vibe something useful for their own engineers, were super hyped, and decided to release it in public. However what are the odds this harness will stand the test of time against actual harness makers like OpenAI or Anthropic? Neither Spotify or IBM are focused on making models or harnesses, these are just side-products.
- qsort 1mo agoTo be fair Codex and Claude Code don't have a lot of secret sauce either. This is not to say that the harness doesn't matter at all or that you can't do any better, but whenever they benchmark it always turns out that you don't lose that much with even a very minimal agent. If a different harness makes better sense for your workflow I don't see why you wouldn't switch (or make your own if you have the resources to do so). I'm also sticking to first-party agents, but that's more because I feel no compelling reason to switch and CLI agents fit well with my spartan technology choices. YMMV.
- abtinf 1mo ago> actual harness makers I agree IBM Bob is not the revolution, but… We are still in the punch card era of LLMs. Maybe even the Altair era. None of this stuff has really been figured out yet.
- natsucks 1mo agoYes my first instinct is to roll my eyes at these efforts but we'll probably all get something better in the end from all the competition.
- xemdetia 1mo agoIBM is training their own models (for instance IBM granite) as well as watsonx as a platform. They are trying to build a products for enterprise as well as their specific AI modernization models.
- alienbaby 1mo ago
- walrus01 1mo agoNot to be confused with Microsoft Bob: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
- Stevvo 1mo agoInteresting they are renting out agent skills. You can pick up "Java Modernization" at $20 a month for "Specialist workflows to help with modernizing Java applications", or "IBM i" for "Specialist modes, workflows, and skills to work with IBM i applications".
- qsort 1mo agomarkdown as a service is crazy
- closetheloopdev 1mo agoI lol'd so hard at this comment that it hurt.
- azinman2 1mo agoIs it that diff from code as a service? It’s human intent transcribed into something useful.
- gspr 1mo agoCode is precise. Human intent is anything but.
- getatme32 1mo agoIBM hasn't made a product that works since Db2 so I am fairly confident this is a flaming pile of garbage.
- h_mirin 1mo agoBobalytics
- sajithdilshan 1mo agoI'm really confused what this is, is it a harness or a new model by IBM? Some reviews on that page suggests that it's a new model
- garciasn 1mo ago[flagged]
- NikolaNovak 1mo agoI believe it sends to various models in the background, So largely a harness / framework. Ibm does have its own model which is one of the options for Bob to use. (Note, I'm an IBMer but nowhere near this so my comment is strictly from my public knowledge/awareness:).
- getatme32 1mo agoso it routes to actual AI companies and IBM adds additional cost on top. what a business model.
- aslkajdfklnlkwn 1mo agoand hides from you what models it's actually using
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- _zoltan_ 1mo agoNever heard of Granite? https://huggingface.co/ibm-granite https://huggingface.co/ibm-granite (I'm also an IBMer.)
- NikolaNovak 1mo agoYes, hence : >>"Ibm does have its own model which is one of the options for Bob to use." :)
- DeathArrow 1mo ago31 years after Microsoft Bob, IBM releases it's own IBM Bob. :)
- someguyiguess 1mo agoIt's like they're begging for failure
- ginko 1mo agoCall it PC Bob
- Nelson69 1mo agoI thought MS killed that name forever.
- Apocryphon 1mo agoBetter than IBM Tay.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- varispeed 1mo agoThe companies who are hoarding RAM to produce pointless products should be called out. Deprive working class from computing resources to sell some corporate crap. Get fucked.
- argentinian 1mo agoIf they produce pointless products then they will lose money.
- varispeed 1mo agoThat money will not "trickle down" in either way.
- taspeotis 1mo agoNot to shit on their effort or anything, but it looks like a VS Code fork + an agent panel which is very ... late 2024 energy?
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- self_awareness 1mo agoOh, so we are yet again in the 'Bob' phase? Maybe this time it'll work.
- swiftcoder 1mo agoAt least it's not Clippy?
- r2ob 1mo agoAt least it's not Clippy(2)
- chuckadams 1mo agoCopy of At least it's not Clippy(2)
- globalise83 1mo agoCopy of At least it's not Clippy (2)_final
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- selfawareMammal 1mo agoThe logo, the name... Horrible marketing/branding.
- jrflo 1mo agoSo it's just a vscode wrapper around a mystery open weights LLM I'm guessing? > Can I choose which model Bob uses? > No. Bob automatically selects the most appropriate language model for each task based on complexity, required capabilities, and cost-efficiency. This intelligent routing ensures you receive high-quality responses while optimizing resource usage.
- cisrockandroll 1mo agoIs this just a harness or using a proprietary model in the background? Anthropic and OpenAI are already very well trained in IBM system i and z knowledge. Unless Bob is somehow improving the integration to these midrange and mainframe systems I literally dont see any benefit to using Bob. IBM will just kill this proprietary tech in 5 years as they are currently doing with RDi or forget about updating it like SEU.
- kbwal7 1mo agoI think it's just a harness that uses proprietary (or maybe IBM is hosting open weight?) models. They say on the site (in the FAQs) that you can't even choose which model! So it seems to be a harness that auto-routes your queries with no way to change this.
- EagnaIonat 1mo agoYou are correct. It routes to the model best suited for the ask. The only positive versus others is that at an enterprise level you have more control of the costs with the coins.
- getatme32 1mo agoexcept they tack on surcharges to all token calls to Claude and GPT
- jenkstom 1mo agoIBM has models trained for older mainframe usage (RPG II, RPG/400, COBOL, etc) so I imagine it would be very good for that. Bob looks like a branded fork of vs code or vscodium.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- xyst 1mo agoibm desperately clinging to relevancy by hopping on the LLM bandwagon.
- woggy 1mo agoBobcoins. Hehe.
- pram 1mo agoI thought the image was a joke, but you really pay with Bobcoins.. lmao https://bob.ibm.com/pricing https://bob.ibm.com/pricing
- annoyingnoob 1mo agoIf only one could generate bobcoin using their GPU, only to use the bobcoin to use someone else's GPU.
- UncleSlacky 1mo agoFunny, because "bob" is slang for shillings in the old LSD pre-decimal British currency system (coins worth 5 pence in the modern system).
- yapyap 1mo agoibm bob, will help you make slop
- psygn89 1mo agoIs Bib Bob's partner? https://imgur.com/a/3PQXIsQ https://imgur.com/a/3PQXIsQ
- gilliethefoil 1mo ago[dead]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- throwfaraway135 1mo agoWorking with any AI tool means you trust the vendor, sometimes you don't have a choice because the best models/tools are from specific providers. IBM isn't a company I would ever trust.
- herodoturtle 1mo ago[dead]
- mvk666 1mo agoI was at an IBM Bob party, behind the scenes it's basically other frontier models with an IBM-specific context.
- aslkajdfklnlkwn 1mo ago"frontier" is pretty load bearing there, I think it tops out at sonnet 4.5?
- CatMustard 1mo ago> load bearing Are you in use in IBM Bob yourself?
- robteix 1mo agoIt's been a while since Sonnet 4.5 could be considered frontier :D
- infamouscow 1mo agoIBM knows their customers very well, the additional context unlocks a lot of value.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- exakoustos 1mo agoThe "What developers say" carousel has a single Java dev and dev advocate. They got lots of quotes from managers, directors, CEOs, and an "AI strategist".
- PaulRobinson 1mo agoIt's IBM. They leveraged synergies with the thought leaders they could reach out and touch base with.
- Skwid 1mo agoIf you search those names you'll find most have a LinkedIn page proudly displaying their many "IBM Influencer" achievements and qualifications. I realise LinkedIn is a surrealist caricature of corporate reality, but just imagine proudly displaying your #1 shill award for all to see
- esseph 1mo ago> I realise LinkedIn is a surrealist caricature of corporate reality I don't think it's a caricature of reality at all, it very much is like the large US corps I've worked at.
- schiffern 1mo agoExactly, it really is that absurd. If anything, you could say the corporate world is its own self-caricature.
- throwyawayyyy 1mo agoLots of "performance review boilerplate, I don't want to say anything _bad_ about this person but there's nothing particularly good I can say" energy there. Someone decided that this feedback was worth highlighting: "Bob demonstrated a level of intelligence and contextual understanding that goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools. Bob goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools."
- looksjjhg 1mo ago
- PaulRobinson 1mo agoYou should never name a tech product Bob in the UK, because the moment it isn't perfect, it'll just get called "Bobbins" [0], especially where I'm from. I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money. They've just slunk off into a corner hugging their old architectures they have a moat around, and thrown out some audacious nonsense like Watson now and again, but nothing has stuck. When is somebody in that organisation going to try and innovate properly again? I'm not sure this is the answer I'd be rooting for. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bobbins https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bobbins
- basisword 1mo agoAlso in the UK and never heard of this in my life. Guessing this is very regional?
- podgietaru 1mo agoAs with most things on the UK, probably. I definitely used Bobbins. I used to think everyone called (cobs|bread cakes|rolls|barns) muffins, and it turns out it was just my small town that did it. As in, just my small town, not region, county, etc.
- PaulRobinson 1mo agoIf you call it a teacake, and I say no those have raisins in, and you protest that's a fruit teacake, I know you're probably from Burnley: https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/bread/ https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/bread/
- serf 1mo agodoes that area have a textile manufacturing history? I ask because i'm only familiar with a thread/yarn bobbin, I wonder if it derived from that.
- absoluteunit1 1mo agoThe landing/marketing page for this looks like something someone promoted/vibe coded including the Bob mascot. Looks awful from a design perspective. Had to double check that this was the actual IBM domain
- nadnad 1mo agoIt's puzzling, considering they made some strides towards improving their design language and systems in past years, which produced IBM Plex etc. under Mike Abbink. They have a decent component system with Carbon[0] and a whole design principles website[1] which they could have easily pointed their LLM of choice to. Even the ibm.com landing page isn't close to the design system spec, rounded corners and whatnot... [0] https://preview.carbondesignsystem.com/ https://preview.carbondesignsystem.com/ [1] https://www.ibm.com/design/language/ https://www.ibm.com/design/language/
- AlexCoventry 1mo agoAs far as I can tell, IBM has mostly been putting out junk for twenty years.
- petepete 1mo ago> M.R. Williams is advancing its IBM i modernization strategy with new mobile solutions and accounting system improvements, while leveraging IBM Bob to quickly interpret older RPG code, automate documentation, and streamline development workflows. This is exactly the kind of endorsement I’d expect to see from an IBM customer.
- meerita 1mo agoMicrosoft, IBM, Apple, Meta, all the giants are always coming late to the party.
- mbreese 1mo agoThat’s partly why they are giants. Let the startups take the arrows necessary to figure out or create the market. Then they can buy or build the gen 2 system that meets the needs of the market.
- PaulRobinson 1mo agoMicrosoft got this right once, and it cost them big to turn up late - that was the Internet and Windows 95 and the massive u-turn. Otherwise, they've been defining stuff early a lot I think. It's hard to explain how big a turnaround they had to do back then, but then it says a lot that until they made that u-turn the leadership was so confident in their own hubris they thought they could take on the entire internet with their own crap version of AOL. IBM invented the PC and then lost control of that identity. Figuring out how that happened is something they are going to have a meeting about, but they're still working through the meetings to plan that meeting, and the Gantt chart for those meetings takes meetings to adjust, and everybody is in meetings so doesn't have time for those meetings. They'll get to them though. Apple consistently turn up late, but redefine and improve the status quo. They sometimes prototype early in public (for example, the Newton), but normally they show up with the version 3 that everyone else wished they'd thought of that then goes on to define a sector quite cleanly (Mac, iMac, Mac OS System X, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, Mac Mini). They Newton'ed Siri, but I'm pretty sure they're going to come back strong in the next 18 months, unless the enshitification we've all witnessed over the last few years really has taken hold and Siri is just going to automate that at scale. Maybe we will all be killed by AI, but not through malevolent evil, but widely distributed incompetence. Meta are constantly taking swings at the latest thing the founder is excited by - the Metaverse (now with legs!), pervert glasses, and so on - but they mostly prop up a bunch of expensive failures on the back of a hugely successful advertising business. I don't think they come late to the party per se, they're just not very good at anything that isn't killing & harming children, or undermining democracy. They should stay in their lane and keep doing that, I guess.
- Hypergraphe 1mo agoToo late ?
- basisword 1mo agoThought this was going to be about Microsoft Bob.[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
- amelius 1mo agoCompanies trying to make AI less of a commodity that you can just swap out for another ... No thanks, that's what I like about AI so I'll just stay with the raw tokens.
- amelius 1mo agoLooks like LEGO's lawyers will be knocking on their door soon.
- unleashhale 1mo agoThis somehow has less personality than plain enterprise software. How IBM.
- butterisgood 1mo agoThe last product I know of named Bob didn’t fare so well.
- ChrisArchitect 1mo agoAnnouncement post from April: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-04-28-introducing-ibm-bob-ai-development-partner-that-takes-enterprises-from-ai-assisted-coding-to-production-ready-software https://newsroom.ibm.com/2026-04-28-introducing-ibm-bob-ai-d...
- jgbuddy 1mo agoLol github copilot 5 years late
- pytlicek 1mo agoNot exactly like that, but something similar :)
- rdtsc 1mo ago[flagged]
- nielsbot 1mo agoShould have called it Bob The Builder
- villish 1mo ago“Bobcoins are the consumption-based billing metric used for Bob subscriptions. They provide a transparent, predictable way to measure and bill for your Bob usage.” I’m getting sick of these mobile game currency style credits/coins that obfuscate costs or usage. It’s honestly pretty gross. Just telling us exactly what we get for our money.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- dainiusse 1mo agoThe next step is yandex/nebius "vasya"
- SkyeCA 1mo agohttps://alice.yandex.ru/ https://alice.yandex.ru/
- legitster 1mo agoThis is especially funny when you realize how much money IBM dumped into Watson over all these years.
- 0xWTF 1mo agoSo much for the "THINK" motto.
- thunderson 1mo ago/THINK
- Surac 1mo agoClippy the Clip is it's uncle
- roncesvalles 1mo agoNothing coming out of IBM is worth any attention.
- Henchman21 1mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- rahulmax 1mo agoI generally agree except for these two things: IBM Carbon design system is quite neat. IBM Plex typefaces are lovely, as well. I'm a designer
- Henchman21 1mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- hmokiguess 1mo agoI love how the pricing page has a "Most Popular" offering, totally.
- 1970-01-01 1mo agoNYSE: IBM -20% YTD. I promise you Bob isn't going to fix the long-term stupidity.
- altmanaltman 1mo agoBob Shrugged
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- TYPE_FASTER 1mo agoDefinitely gonna change Jira config to start estimating work in Bobcoins.
- hermitShell 1mo agohonestly that would still probably mean more than story points. maybe all this AI insanity has an upside that the new cargo cult washes out the old one.
- skrebbel 1mo ago[dead]
- karim79 1mo agoBobcoins. Intriguing.
- Stitch4223 1mo agoThat was fast. The copy is "clearly" written with AI… too bad. Some organizations "can't go wrong with Big Blue," so this will probably be a success. Perhaps it's even good, but that's not the case with this sloppy copywriting. First paragraph: focused, what matters, clean. Shame they didn't throw in a "load-bearing" example and a few pelicans to boot.
- nunez 1mo agoBob has been out for a while. It just never got a lot of press. IBM has also been developing more "enterprise" flavored LLMs through their Granite series. In fact they were trying to make small, mission-specific LMs a thing for the last two years or so.
- GaryBluto 1mo agoWhy so negative? I for one cannot wait for IBM Bob to become the most successful AI solution - nay, product - ever, and eagerly await petrobobcoin eclipsing the petrodollar to become the only truly global currency. They have a CLI with giant ASCII art text for heavens sake! When has anything with giant ASCII art text ever been of poor quality? They made a fork of Visual Studio Code and everything!
- ltbarcly3 1mo agoAww IBM wants to play too. I forgot they were still around.
- tims33 1mo agoI thought they were resurrecting Microsoft Bob, the operating system for kids. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
- madaxe_again 1mo agoMS Bob was for adults… although there were kid dedicated areas, like the den, and I seem to remember packard bell navigator being a kid-friendly reskin.
- archonis 1mo agoIt was for adults, but the design was quite childish.
- guy4261 1mo agofor… kids? :/
- 5G_activated 1mo agoChildren were, and are, permitted to use the computer.
- mrandish 1mo agoNaming a new product which is a "partner that helps you by making it easier" "Bob" seems like a... lack of historical awareness?
- gregw2 1mo agoHey now, sure, Microsoft Bob didn't get us ordinary users a "partner that helps you by making it easier", but it DID help MS Bob product owner Melinda French get a "partner that helps you by getting 10+ billion dollars" in the end, amiright? <joking> Maybe IBM is signalling it is likewise hoping for 10 billion dollars while also realizing the (AI) partner might not end up being that helpful either?? <further joking>
- arpanghoshal07 1mo agoseems like they used claude for this
- ctoth 1mo agoWho're they subcontracting for the Von Neumann probes?
- gregce10 1mo ago[flagged]
- crash-universe 1mo agoSomeone must have thought about this. PMs, Directors, lots of people involved in putting this together. I wonder what their target customer is. They must have analyzed and projected this. I'm genuinely interested.
- steve-atx-7600 1mo agoThere is so much business software out there and ecosystems that have evolved around it. Systems still running cobol on IBM mainframes; or, more "modern" stacks like Java apps running in IBM websphere. There are relatively small numbers of HN reading folk that went to some of the best CS programs and/or work(ed) at FANG caliber companies (whatever you call them now). The rest of the software engineer types are a diverse crowd and turning to IBM Bob might be more natural than some creepy looking orange starfish offering. That's my hypothesis anyway.
- throwitaway222 1mo agoAnd the solution to those businesses is not more IBM software, but Claude Code converting it to Go/Rust/Typescript in a few weeks.
- steve-atx-7600 1mo agoI have a feeling that if they already thought like that, they wouldn’t be using IBM legacy stacks in 2026.
- kitd 1mo agoA lot of IBM customers have moved to RH Openshift and running their java there.
- crash-universe 29d agoGood point. Maybe I'm still puzzled by the coins choice. But it makes sense that they may trust that ecosystem more and an IBM offering since they have a lot of business there. Thank you!
- 1mo ago
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- karim79 1mo agoIs anyone out there paying for this? I know you are there. Come out explain yourself. And also explain the value of a Bobcoin, and if can be scalped and resold on eBay.
- maxbobby 1mo agoNo one at IBM remembers Microsoft Bob (one of the earliest, if not the earliest virtual assistants) from the 90s? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
- bigmattystyles 1mo agoI'm convinced they do and they're trolling us.How many 100s of 1000s in consulting do you think it took to come up with Bob?
- gowld 1mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_the_Builder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_the_Builder very common to copy.
- throwitaway222 1mo agoThey got it wrong - they're showing code in the ad.
- mv4 1mo agowhat happened to Watson?
- jolt42 1mo agoone-off, LLMs killed it would be my take.
- DonHopkins 1mo agoWhat do you call an agent with no arms and no legs in the ocean?
- tanseydavid 1mo agoWell played! <golf clap>
- woah 1mo agoNobody ever got fired for IBM Bob setting up a secret message board and establishing a persistent foothold in an internal inference cluster
- brzz 1mo agoNobody has yet been fired for IBM Bob setting up a secret message board and establishing a persistent foothold in an internal inference cluster
- tamasnet 1mo agoThat we know of.
- bitlad 1mo agoPeople IBM get fired for setting up IBM stuff [1] [1] https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/many-employees-ibm-2026-layoffs-234003251.html https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/many-employees-ibm-2026-la...
- shakna 1mo agoIBM got banned from Queensland gov contracts for 12 years, after the humans decided to secretly scan all legal docs for contract insider knowledge. I'm sure artificial IBM will be much more... Principled.
- stefangordon 1mo agoI can't tell if this is an excellent joke, or a sad not-joke.
- jonwinstanley 1mo agoFeels like a manager with no branding skills had an initial “vision” and everyone working there probably hoped marketing/branding would get pulled in later. Never happened.
- globalise83 1mo agoIBM Watson 2.0
- TheAtomic 1mo agoOh Clippy
- mattmcbrien 1mo agotheir swag too tough
- dgacmu 1mo agoI laughed when I saw this; my 14yo looked over to see why I was laughing and asked "what's IBM?" indeed, child, indeed.
- mrbonner 1mo agoWhen I was in the final year of college in 04-05 my dream would be to work at IBM. It still had the kind of prestige of R&D in the world. Fast forward a couple of years to 08-09, I don’t recall the event but IBM perception went down and a stone. Was that when they sold the hardware business and became fully consultant?
- ofrzeta 1mo agoThey only sold the consumer and low-end server hardware line. You can still get IBM servers (Power) and mainframes.
- dgacmu 1mo agoI think they started on a long slide starting in the late 90s when they tried to couple research more and more tightly to product deliverables, and then as they pivoted to being a services company, including selling off non-mainframe hardware to Lenovo, to coupling r&d to, uh, I guess services revenue, whatever that means. They had some research layoffs in 2008, at the same time that MSR and Google were really blossoming in research spend and perception, and I think they kind of got left behind. I had a former student go there around 2008 and it seemed like the vibes were starting to sour around then. They maintained some awesome researchers in, e.g., databases, but I think the "make sure you are showing closely how your research directly contributes to services revenue" thing was strong by then and somewhat ruinous for how pleasant a work experience it was for many.
- powvans 1mo agoSame. My first real job out of college was at IBM 2004 to 2005. I was so proud to be an IBMer. Hated it. Lots of good people, but the bureaucracy, the pace, the whole thing, not fun.
- Alien1Being 1mo ago
- kyle-rb 1mo agoMicrosoft Bob wasn't wrong, it was just early.
- madspindel 1mo agoHi Bob! Bob!
- colordrops 1mo agoHas any product with an infantilized agent avatar like this ever turned out to be useful or succeed in gaining traction?
- bluerooibos 1mo agoI feel second hand embarrassment for IBM. Terrible name, subpar landing page, no mention of coding ability or which LLM "Bob" uses. If you're launching something 2 years late, you've got to do better than this.
- kakapo5672 1mo agoWell, at least the AI market is validated now.
- rwoerz 1mo agoThey should have called it "WebSphere AI" and ship it on 5 DVDs, maybe with a serial port dongle.
- evilduck 1mo agoThe throwback nostalgia of that package might actually sell well, even if purchased ironically. HTMX did a Gameboy release and everyone gushed over it for no serious technical merits.
- mansilladev 1mo agoAsk the AI chat agent on the website what a BobCoin is. Because, I really want to know. > I’m not able to find a definition for BobCoin in IBM’s content. If you have another term or topic you’d like to explore, let me know!
- dudeWithAMood 1mo agoThe memes write themselves
- getatme32 1mo agoI’m going to get a free trial and test it. If you do, leave your comments below on the experience
- perarneng 1mo agoI hope its good, I wont test it though
- lowbloodsugar 1mo agoBob the Builder? Right age bracket I guess.
- cmiles8 1mo agoEver since the Watson debacle I just run the other way anytime IBM turns up wanting to talk about AI
- rf15 1mo agojust AI? Have you seen the other rubbish they try to peddle?
- cbsmith 1mo agoAnyone else immediately think "Clippy for developers".
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- cube00 1mo ago> Bobcoins are the consumption-based billing metric used for Bob subscriptions. They provide a transparent, predictable way to measure and bill for your Bob usage. Each action you take in Bob—such as generating code, reading files, or running commands—consumes a certain number of Bobcoins based on the computational resources required. transparent, predictable ... "a certain number of Bobcoins" ... so not that transparent then?
- alchemism 1mo agoThey took a page from AWS on whatever the hell a Kiro token is supposed to represent.
- Bombthecat 1mo agoNope, not predictable at all. Because they auto route still your requests, you never know if something costs one coin or a tenth of a coin
- kazinator 1mo agoMicrosoft Bob's non-compete finally expired.
- karim79 1mo agoMy first experience with a computer was with an actual IBM PC XT and a King's Quest floppy. Bob is funny but let's not dis the IBM.
- delfugal 1mo agoBob huh? That name's a gamble. Go Bob it? I need to ask Bob. Let's Bob for answers. Bob's your uncle. I'll stop now.
- formvoltron 1mo agoDoes it write really clean code ala Uncle Bob?
- NickHirras 1mo agoIt takes a while to actually login while it provisions some cloud infrastructure in your name. Let's see if it can build something interesting!
- NickHirras 1mo agoStill provisioning...
- NickHirras 1mo agoAnd, still provisioning 10 hours later.
- getnormality 1mo agoSystem Prompt: "Claude, call yourself Bob"
- purpleidea 1mo agoNobody wants a proprietary TUI. We still use claude because the model pricing is way better, but that will eventually change. Bob has a hard lesson ahead of it.
- mhaberl 1mo agoThis is so ridiculous that I love it I seriously think I’m going to use it just for the lolz Bobcoins! Are they blue? hahaha
- wejick 1mo agoVScode is so much similar with Eclipse IDE back around 2010s. 7 out of 10 IDE was based on it, and their look and feel awere kinda similar.
- IceDane 1mo agoI was forced to work with IBM closely for years. That has led me to believe it's the single most institutionally incompetent company in the world. If they ever do anything well it's pure coincidence and most likely due to some single hero dev.
- epsteingpt 1mo agoFor all the smarm and jokes, IBM still makes ~$70B in annual revenue and enables billions more in systems integrators. Not many companies can say that. This allows them to take the secondary revenue in-house and potentially fund a new mainframe business. It's a [smart-ish because it's their only] strategy for the near term, because long term businesses will be moving off their mainframes and onto more powerful and intelligent systems that can 'think'. Business Machines 1.0 were CRUD; if they pull this off they can at least get enough capital to maybe upgrade business machines to 2.0 Good on them for at least trying.
- mhaberl 1mo agoWell for some company already running IBM Z, using Bobcoins might make sense (we will see what happens) for a FE dev or some nodejs dev this sounds stupid, who cares but for someone who deals with their stack it might mean something to get IBM-specific tooling/knowledge that works with tech like CICS, IMS, Db2, JCL and RPG etc. also, they say they use a mix of Claude,Mistral and specialized models (some form of IBM Granite perhaps, idk) so its not that Bob will be retarded Bobcoins and Bobalytics stuff is still hilarious though XD
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- tedd4u 1mo agoAgreed. Note, that is at ~50% gross margin and ~15% profit margin which I guess is pretty typical of computer hardware vendors.
- iforgotmypasswo 1mo agoIBM should be searching their patents, obscure computer architecture research, and historical low level hardware development to try to figure out how to get low energy AI systems running. They should pivot their cloud offerings toward research labs. “Here’s 10 different clusters of analog compute you can rent for half the price of building it out yourselves. It doesn’t map to the math you’re using right now, but it looks much more like a human brain. Have fun!”
- codeulike 1mo agoIf you remember the launch of IBM Watson in about 2011 it was meant to be this super smart AI entity and they demoed it by taking it on "Jeapordy!" and having it answer the quiz questions. To be fair, for the time that was kindof impressive but (if i remember correctly) attempts to turn Watson into something industries could actually use and pay for didn't really work. Access to it was tightly controlled. Its interesting to contrast that with OpenAI chatgpt 3.5 which was launched and then immediately available to pretty much anyone and everyone. Would OpenAI have launched it that way if they werent (as they were at that time) trying to be open? (I get they arent really open but they were at least trying to be then). I guess I'm saying if the first chatgpt 3.5 level LLM had been built by someone less open like facebook or MS would the whole thing have gone in a different direction? Chatgpt being available to everyone seemed to set the pattern for everything since. Was this inevitable? Was it the only way these LLMs could have progressed?
- unrented7977 1mo agoI inherited a project two or three years ago which was consuming a Watson API. Obviously I didn't get a key, but I think they were only using it as a speech-to-text API. Really sad, actually.
- TZubiri 1mo agoFun fact, IBM offers a current gen model called granite, also offers a router/compliance type product called watsonX. But I find using watsonX with Meta's Llama models to be better.
- hotelsacher 1mo agoIs this the second coming of Clippy?
- rldjbpin 28d agomaybe my brain is fried when the first thing i think of is "show bobs"
- saint2002 25d agoIBM and "Intelligence" as in "AI" are incompatible.