The features described seem of dubious general value, but don’t seem like things that would work without an LLM, especially the smart text area. (Smart ComboBox sounds like it might be more generally useful than the others.)
But the point of these seems to be more of a solution looking for a problem than attempt to find an efficient solution to an identified problem. Or, rather, they are one of Microsoft’s many efforts as part of looking for a solution to their problem of “how to do we monetize our investment into AI technology” not a solution to customer problems.
This isn't particular to Microsoft. The current profusion of reaching attempts to tack AI onto everything following the popularity of LLM-based products fits the familiar arc of any hyped next big thing in tech.
I encourage people to regularly browse HN stories and comments from N years ago to force yourself to confront the cultural obsessions of yesteryear that have faded from memory.
But if Smart Paste makes errors even 1% of the time then that would be astonishing from an LLM benchmark POV and still completely unacceptable from a CRM reliability POV. Nobody wants a data entry system where you have to fix 1 in 100 rows because the computer made an error.
The three common types of "REST" I have encountered in enterprise dev are:
1. Ancient XML/SOAP based APIs Frankenstiened to use JSON
2. Poorly implemented RPCs advertised as "JSON REST API", usually the entire thing either relies on POST requests but sometimes GET is used to make stateful changes.
3. Things that should obviously be RPC split into dozens of anemic JSON endpoints that the caller has to re-construct to get anything useful
Incidently, my company's leadership got inspired by Amazon's API culture and made # of APIs a metric that teams must hit. The result is every single endpoint being deployed as a separate API, and teams blocking access to native vendor APIs so each operation can be republished as a new API. :)
Yea. I assume from the article it's an alias for an HTTP interface that usually uses JSON payloads. I use those in a few projects, both work and personal. Are they Rest? Maybe. They use Django REST framework. But I think of them and describe them as HTTP APIs.
Well, if we're being truthful, none of us use REST. We're all just cherry-picking the parts of it that work for our organizations... and that's absolutely fine. The programtic discoverability portion of REST always struck me as pretty poorly thought-out anyways.
I think you missed the point. You 100% use it every day. You’re using it on this website right now. Your web browser shows you what actions you’re able to take against the HN api. Neat, huh?
Why stop there? Programmers are the ones most familiar with the software, they should be selling it. If they don’t have time they can hire more programmers, HR is easy… also they can automate the salary and procurement systems.
Save 50% of your gross salary, invest in index funds, and be patient. You can speed up the process via geo-arbitrage, climbing the career ladder without lifestyle creep, working at a FAANG, being more frugal, or side hustles. Search for FIRE for more details.
Let's be honest, it's only possible for people with rare skills and/or prestigious credentials (which are largely a function of your parents social class).
Earning median wage most of that goes towards rent. There's nothing left to save. Move further away and you lose big on earnings.
> Earning median wage most of that goes towards rent. There's nothing left to save. Move further away and you lose big on earnings.
If you are in your teens or 20's in a median wage income, then I advise considering vanlife grinding towards FIRE. I spent so much time in libraries or labs at that stage of my life that in hindsight, I should have dismissed the stigma of "homelessness" and adopted vanlife, scraped enough together for a duplex down payment, rent both sides out initially until one side is paid off, and then settle in that side should I want out of vanlife at that point.
For some definitions of wealth, sure. I think the minimum definition is that you are freed from at least some need to labor. Clearly there’s a wealth point at which you need to capture excess value from the labor of others.
Exploited? Working for a living is called being an adult. The inverse of which is sticking your hand out and demanding that everyone carry you through adult life. People who agree to work for someone else are, in no way, being exploited. You have a choice to be a bum, as much as you have a choice where to work. And your options are greater when you're not a bum and have marketable skills that employers are willing pay for. Furthermore, if you're not a bum and you acquire skills, you can start your own business and do extremely well for yourself, and support dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of families if your business requires employees. I'm interested in discovering where you learned that successful business owners are "exploiting" people who willingly work for them.
Absolutely. I’m not a fan of the overly broad definition of exploitation meaning “anyone who has a job.” Clearly voluntarily selling your labour for money isn’t exploitation. Save your money and live off the interest.
The problem is these platforms double as identity providers so your twitter hacked can give access to other websites - it’s crazy that this was ever a thing
No, it’s bad business because it doesn’t scale. Software is lucrative because you make it once and sell it to thousands of customers. If you’re making every customer their own bespoke thing, you’ll spend all your time for little return.
“Billed to the customer” means you’re charging the customer by the hour / project. You can get plenty of return selling bespoke things this way. Accenture is a $200 billion company.
That’s called Professional Services. Professional Services assemble a solution for a customer from a variety of components and maybe build some glue or the equivalent of a dashboard. This is not the same as having a ton of “if” statements in code to handle customer X vs customer Y.
The secret, as a software vendor, is to generalise these bespoke customer requests so you can sell the solution to all your customers (and get more customers!). If you are really cheeky, you can even get that customer to help fund the development that will make your business more money (hey, it’s win-win). You need to ruthlessly follow this approach though, as the rot of bespoke code will quickly become an insurmountable quality nightmare that can sink your business.
