Re:Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the ...
by miek on Sunday August 23, 2020 @12:35AM
(#24249549)
I am predicting this at the large firm where i work. They use terms like "robotics" and "ai robots". The primary line of thought being touted across the firm is "easier to transfer and maintain than traditional code", but there is substantial gatekeeping occurring. I assume license prices are high, because there are not many per department. I am guessing that some of the "automators" holding these scarce licenses will develop a nice moat for themselves if they can prove their value. I sat in on a meeting where the "automator" and his manager said they were seeking to automate high-time-savings/high-risk tasks first (risk being large potential dollar loss, legal exposure, etc. upon failure), which is odd but great for visibility and moat-building (given that fear of traditional code brought them to this point, fear of being unable to properly maintain the ""robots"" could easily come next)
Re:Ask HN: What non-obvious tech/market may take off in the ...
by muzani on Monday August 24, 2020 @12:55AM
(#24257608)
I feel like this will be like WordPress at best, and Cordova at worst.
WP lets someone with no formal CS training do wonders, and I think it's a good thing.
Cordova tries to save time and cost, but you need people with above average skill to hack things, know all the gotchas and bugs of the no-code system, all the undocumented bits, but still deal with the risks. Nobody wants to do the plumbing, nobody wants to dedicate their career to it, and so it ends up overpriced to the buyer and underpriced to the seller.
You could also end up with something like Parse, which had some of the best handovers from closed into open source, but the stigma of being dropped by a major tech company made people avoid it.
Servicing software debt is an industry in itself.