So much reflexive hate against a genuinely transformative tech. Yes AI has annoying people and grifters, but it is genuinely incredible at some things and finding out how to use it effectively within a company is the most fun I’ve had in my career.

I took a course in using it for woodworking, and just kept thinking “this should all be a single extension”, so I’ve been building that.

1. My cousin who works for an enterprise real estate SaaS company. He said their main product has iirc 10-20,000 database tables.

2. Evernote users had famously little overlap in which features they used. Everyone use a slightly different subset of Evernote tools.

I wonder if you could create a 2x2 grid of these two scenarios to determine a SaaS tool's likelihood of being replaced with AI.

- Complex Data Model + High feature adoption: Low risk of AI

- Complex Data Model + Low feature adoption: Medium risk short term. High long term.

- Simple data model + High feature adoption: High long term risk risk, but limited ability to grow accouts

- Simple data + low feature adoption: Very high risk

2. A suspicious number of "It's not X, it's Y" in this piece.

I'm sympathetic to folks who grew up shaped by this. Not for nothing, but The Conversation also has a compelling start/end, but has a long, arguably slow, boring middle. So it's like being forced into withdrawal on hard mode.

I often go on food tours in new cities (e.g. Secret Food Tours) and the restaurants they visit seem to like the consistent revenue stream during off-hours.

Certain name types are so normalized (agent, worker, etc) that while they serve their role well, they likely limit our imagination when thinking about software, and it's a worthwhile effort to explore alternatives.

Software developer in the data/platform/python space. I have training funds to spend in the next 12 days. There are plenty of paid resources out there, but relatively few seem better than reading the docs end to end.

What paid resources have folks found better than the many free resources available? This could be courses, books, newsletters, etc.

Note: I already own Designing Data Intensive Applications.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46318611

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

This particular example may be unlikely, but it's a very fun idea.

The only way to convincingly make the case for new information is with pretty rigorous technical arguments, which is fundamentally at odds with a lay audience. If someone has those rigorous technical arguments, they'd be making them in journals to a technical audience, and the results would slowly become consensus.

Obvi there are counter-examples, but as a general rule I think this is far more true than not. Which is why if you learn from Forbes that someone is close to cracking AGI, you can almost outright assume this is untrue.

You get X resources in the cloud and know that a certain request/load profile will run against it. You have to configure things to handle that load, and are scored against other people.

That's just being a realistic technology user in 2025.

Easy to take for granted, but their peer companies are not doing this type of long term investment.

Getting Prop 13 overturned is about as likely as California seceding from the US.

Actually, it might even be less likely than that.