I’ve often wondered the opposite. The number of pieces of software I used to pay for that I was able to replace with software I’ve built using agents is nearing double digits. I wonder how much longer people will need to pay huge software companies instead of just collaborate with a few other folks using AI and build their own better version.
I have paid a relatively big price for a software which does a simple thing: Drawing diagrams. The application? It's called OmniGraffle Pro. That simple looking program drawing diagrams can do flowcharts to scaled architectural or industrial diagrams and everything in between.
Try replicating it with a couple of agents. Not the capabilities, but the performance, stability and dependability and sustainability as well.
Same is true for my favorite text editor on macOS, BBEdit, or IDE of choice, Eclipse. I can increase the number of examples.
These tools are valuable not because they are expensive. They are valuable, or indeed priceless, because of the polish they have. The small features make no sense for a beginner or how they cope when things get absurdly haywire.
Immediate features make us excited and they are easier to replicate because they are visible, but things like performance, dependability, error recovery or the small tweaks they have gone through in the last decade are not, and this is what matters.
We're exploring computing via AI again, and we act as that we did nothing in the last 60 years or so. Software and computing is much deeper than it looks at the surface, and we'll learn this in a very very painful way, again.
This. I happily pay for IntelliJ software (even though basically everything else I use is FLOSS). It is not really this feature or that feature of WebStorm that makes it worth while, but just that 40+ hours of the weeks it just works. For normal stuff, for edge cases, small projects, big repos. When I need something, it just works (with out me needing to fiddle with an agent to build me some brittle scripting that will kinda work today, but break tomorrow....).
someguyiguess · · focus · HN ↗
bayindirh · · focus · HN ↗
Try replicating it with a couple of agents. Not the capabilities, but the performance, stability and dependability and sustainability as well.
Same is true for my favorite text editor on macOS, BBEdit, or IDE of choice, Eclipse. I can increase the number of examples.
These tools are valuable not because they are expensive. They are valuable, or indeed priceless, because of the polish they have. The small features make no sense for a beginner or how they cope when things get absurdly haywire.
Immediate features make us excited and they are easier to replicate because they are visible, but things like performance, dependability, error recovery or the small tweaks they have gone through in the last decade are not, and this is what matters.
We're exploring computing via AI again, and we act as that we did nothing in the last 60 years or so. Software and computing is much deeper than it looks at the surface, and we'll learn this in a very very painful way, again.
jlkuester7 · · focus · HN ↗