Don't be the person refusing the 4GL/Segway/3D TV/NFT/Metaverse. Regularly give the new tool a chance and check if improvements are useful for specific tasks.

Like, I mean, at a certain point it runs out of chances. If someone can show me compelling quantitive evidence that these things are broadly useful I may reconsider, but until then I see no particular reason to do my own sampling. If and when they are useful, there will be _evidence_ of that.

(In fairness Segways seem to have a weird afterlife in certain cities helping to make tourists more annoying; there are sometimes niche uses for even the most pointless tech fads.)

▲ aurareturn 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

  Like, I mean, at a certain point it runs out of chances. If someone can show me compelling quantitive evidence that these things are broadly useful I may reconsider, but until then I see no particular reason to do my own sampling. If and when they are useful, there will be _evidence_ of that.

My relative came to me to make a small business website for her. She knew I was a "coder". She gave me a logo and what her small business does.

I fed all of it into Vercel v0 and out came a professional looking website that is based on the logo design and the business segment. It was mobile friendly too. I took the website and fed it to ChatGPT and asked it to improve the marketing copy. I fed the suggestions back to v0 to make changes.

My relative was extremely happy with the result.

It took me about 10 minutes to do all of this.

In the past, it probably would have taken me 2 weeks. One week to design, write copy, get feedback. Another week to code it, make it mobile friendly, publish it. Honestly, there is no way I could have done a better job given the time constraint.

I even showed my non-tech relative how to use v0. Since all changes requested to v0 was in english, she had no trouble learning how to use it in one minute.

▲ cons0le an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I detest LLMs , but I want to point out that segway tech became the basis for EUCs , which are based https://youtu.be/Ze6HRKt3bCA?t=1117

These things are wicked, and unlike some new garbage javascript framework, it's revolutionary technology that regular people can actually use and benefit from. The mobility they provide is insane.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ElectricUnicycle/comments/1ddd9c1/i...

	▲	catapart 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		lol! I thought this was going to link to some kind of innovative mobility scooter or something. I was still going to say "oh, good; when someone uses the good parts of AI to build something different which is actually useful, I'll be all ears!", because that's all you would really have been advocating for if that was your example. But - even funnier - the thing is an urbanist tech-bro toy? My days of diminishing the segway's value are certainly coming to a middle.

▲ Spivak an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean sure but none of these even claimed to help you do things you were already doing. If your job is writing code none of these help you do that.

That being said the metaverse happened but it just wasn't the metaverse those weird cringy tech libertarians wanted it to be. Online spaces where people hang out are bigger than ever. Segways also happened they just changed form to electric scooters.

▲

catapart 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

Being honest, I don't know what a 4GL is. But the rest of them absolutely DID claim to help me do things I was already doing. And, actually, NFTs and the Metaverse even specifically claimed to be able to help with coding in various different flavors. It was mostly superficial bullshit, but... that's kind of the whole tech for those two things.

In any case, Segways promised to be a revolution to how people travel - something I was already doing and something that the marketing was predicated on. 3DTVs - a "better" way to watch TV, which I had already been doing. NFTs - (among other things) a financially superior way to bank, which I had already been doing. Metaverse - a more meaningful way to interact with my team on the internet, which I had already been doing.

	▲	rsynnott 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		A 4GL is a "fourth generation language"; they were going to reduce the need for icky programmers back in the 70s. SQL is the only real survivor, assuming you're willing to accept that it counts at all. "This will make programmers obsolete" is kind of a recurrent form of magic tech; see 4GLs, 5GLs, the likes of Microsoft Access, the early noughties craze for drag-and-drop programming, 'no-code', and so forth. Even _COBOL_ was kind of originally marketed this way.