It’s interesting to see how Netflix evaluates RecSys internally, inferring from how they are comparing GenRec to it. In both cases the premise seems to be that users mainly want to engage with more of the same.

I would be even more interested in some kind of comparison to Netflix’s much earlier system for exchanging reviews and recommendations among a user’s human social group. Seems like there could be some insights around the input of fresh signals from aligned but not strictly conforming participants.

In which case yeah, projects are likely to converge on whatever pattern LLMs broadly fall into. But maybe that part doesn’t really matter. Not every project needs the engineer to care about that. If I’m not writing hardware level code, I don’t care what instructions my python compiles to, either.

Meanwhile nothing prevents someone from caring about these details if wanted or needed. Someone who knows and cares might absolutely do a better job than an LLM. Those people won’t necessarily go away.

But there -will- be a whole new category of software contributors who have ideas they don’t know how to express in a software language. Those ideas might well be very tasteful. So it could be argued that software development as a field will gain access to a whole new range of tastes.

I don’t know the answers but it all seems plausible

More recently, it’s less about the buyers and more about the sellers. Design is optimized for flipping, which means fast market movement, which means generic. Yes there is always cookie-cutter, especially in postwar housing boom. Modern markets have just embraced that more fully. Offices don’t embody the tenants identity, or if they do it’s the same as all the other companies “in the space.” Everyone wants to look like Google, at best, otherwise it’s about commodity layouts, finishes, and styles… platforms for cubicles and bulk furniture purchases that can be amortized over the lease. Housing is similar… design for a family that will scatter once the kids leave home and the parents retire elsewhere. Or the inverse… design for Airbnb until the owners are ready to retire and move in or sell off. In any case the inhabitants are a secondary consideration to returns on investment. Design is a cost center to a financial concern.

Unless you’re rich enough not to care about any of this, in which case there’s finally time and space and money for design, but none of it really matters

There’s definitely more to the story and there are myriad factors.

And later if something changes, then they can do the whole DOING SOMETHING NASTY! thing, which is effectively the experience today

Except in this case in a broader sense, we know about something we wouldn’t have otherwise

What’s pointless is doing so in pursuit of winning rather than understanding

The regulatory environment is different, so it’s worth understanding the ramifications as far as what’s expected of you if you’re operating in a different jurisdiction. It’s nothing that can’t be handled, but some may find they have to care about things they haven’t before

It’s a great exercise for shoring up independence from extractive providers

Maybe I should have AI write up an article too. Honestly, it’s not just rare, it quietly matters

Great for generating volumes of output. Less great for going into a flow state and coming out with something that looks like I made it, something that I see my hand in

And yeah, maybe it’s because I never quite get into a flow state when I do it this way. Hmm

A writing teacher once excoriated me for saying that something was important. “Don’t tell me it’s important, show me, and let me decide, and if you do your job I’ll agree”

I don’t know how a completion can tell when it needs to do this. Mostly so far it doesn’t seem capable