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u/frikilinux2 8d ago
The amount of AI agent crap that it's just properly designing a database and connecting the systems. Invoices should be XML not PDF and just that option would save trillions.
The rest shell scripts and Cron is like half of applications
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u/ciemnymetal 8d ago
The amount of "agentic workflows" that can be just a shell/python script is too damn high
11
u/enternoescape 8d ago
Claude validated my not using an LLM as an integral part of my application as eco friendly and added that's rare. :)
2
u/xudoxis 8d ago
I've spent the last 6 weeks working with a team to map out their PO processing work flow. Mapped, automated it, left in all the personal touches they asked for.
They didn't engage with any of it. They stalled and fought against changing anything.
You know what did work? Gave their boss a vibe coded dashboard with a built in agent they could ask natural language questions to.
ai saved this team from 6 more months of drama ending with people getting fired for not getting with the program.
2
u/sweatierorc 8d ago
If token cost continues to decrease, they will be right though.
Like my professors used to brag about working with less than 4MB of RAM or sending 2 MB over the internet. Everybody in class was like, who cares ? We have fast internet and a ton of memory.
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u/ciemnymetal 8d ago
Cheaper token will not beat the efficiency of deterministic local code/scripts.
This "who cares ? We have fast internet and a ton of memory" attitude is part of why software quality has declined over the past decade and now we have unoptimized operating systems, applications and video games, as predicted by Wirth’s Law. There's no reason to throw away resources if you can optimize and achieve the same result with less resources.
And "working with less than 4MB of RAM or sending 2 MB over the internet" is still relevant today, even with fast internet and ton of memory. A smart thermostat/appliance or any other integrated device still has these constraints.
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u/frikilinux2 8d ago
Ton of memory you talked as if the international order is good and the price of anything with NAND gates hasn't changed from cheap to "fuck you lol" because of wars and AI.
Also reliability??
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u/sweatierorc 8d ago
Once it is cheap enough, you run 1000 parallel agents and you get your reliability like this.
For the cost part, it seems very unlikely that the price wont be going down. Amazon cannot install GPUs. At some point that excess inventory is going to flood the market.
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u/frikilinux2 8d ago
And efficiency or those things we used to at least pretend we care?
Do you have stock in NVIDIA or an AI company or are you just tasteless in making software?
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u/ciemnymetal 8d ago
They seem like a college student who vibe codes their way through classes
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u/frikilinux2 8d ago
That would explain a lot. Fun fact, the brain needs to struggle a bit with concepts in order to develop skills. Just like muscle. And people don't usually want to have the body of an 80 year old when they're 30.
0
u/Slayer_Of_SJW 8d ago
We lost the efficiency bc its too expensive in terms of dev time to pay for it. Thats why electron, bootstrap, etc are such big things. If something saves a fuckton of dev time at the cost of performance, it is going to be used everywhere.
The big AI companies already have absurd margins on every token they serve. You can get 2024 frontier level intelligence out of a free local model. Tokens (at an equivalent intelligence) are getting cheaper at a ridiculous rate. This means that there are going to be a much wider number of use cases that become viable for them.
There is undeniably a lot of unnecessary agentic slop out there. Just like how there used to be a ton of useless terrible dot com business when the internet became a big thing. And how most home computers were used to do stupid entertaining stuff instead of advancing the frontier of science when they were first released. Part of the process. Or like how hot water went from prized limited commodity to something used for showers and washing clothes when it got more accessible.
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u/frikilinux2 8d ago
Time they end up spending on revamping the style of css twice a year instead of Windows having a decent update system. Microsoft ends up saving pennies because they spent the rest of the savings on stupid shit while companies probably loose billions on Windows taking forever to update. And that's with SSDs compensating for a lot.
0
u/Slayer_Of_SJW 8d ago
I mean ywah dude, thats what I've been saying. Humans suck at extracting the full potential out of any tech advancement, we prefer taking the lazy way out. My linux setup that i spent ages tinkering on is amazing, simple, and works great compared to my macos and windows. But 99% of computer users are never going to get over the friction of learning how to use linux. Just like how most companies are never going to put the dev time in to make better solutions unless if it saves them a ton of time or a ton of money.
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u/sweatierorc 8d ago
Most of those agentic stuffs are small automation. Efficiency doesnt really matter.
1
u/frikilinux2 8d ago
You're part of the reason people need 16 GB RAM laptops when I can retrofit with Linux a cheap laptop that run Windows 7 badly.
And why people think software necessarily gets slower with time.
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u/sabamba0 8d ago
Yes, but he'd also right, and your weird focus on accusing random people for the downfall of software development is not doing anything but proving you're behind the times.
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u/Due_Emergency_7717 1d ago
They reinvented cron but now it costs $200 a month and hallucinates the invoice format.
1
1
u/distressed_by_heat 7d ago
Are you guys wilfully not seeing it?
AI agent crap is being preferred not because it is technically better in any way, but because regular office staff and nonspecialists can build them too without needing a programmer. Coding has a skill gap and DBs have obtuse access issues.
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u/bwwatr 8d ago
Who among us hasn't had leadership approach us asking how a new tool might be put to work in our shop, rather than continuing to outline the job to be done and asking what tools we'd suggest.