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Schedule tasks on the web

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131–140 of 261 posts

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#131

Post by bwestergard »

obastani wrote: post #129
nickandbro wrote: post #4

I feel like we are just inching closer and closer to a world where rapid iteration of software will be by default. Like for example a trusted user makes feedback -> feedback gets curated into a ticket by an AI agent, then turned into a PR by an Agent, then reviewed by an Agent, before being deployed by an Agent. We are maybe one or two steps from the flywheel being completed. Or maybe we are already there.

I don't know if this is the future, but if it is, why bother building one version of the software for everyone? We can have agents build the website for each user exactly the way they want. That would be the most exciting possibility to come out of AI-generated software.

"why bother building one version of the software for everyone?"

So one user's experience is relevant to another, so they can learn from one another?

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#132

Post by hirako2000 »

Oh my, did Anthropic invent Cron jobs as a service?

It's a game changer.

Edit: my mistake. It's inferior to a Cron job. If my repos happen to be self hosted with Forgejo or codeberg, then it won't even work. If I concede to use GitHub though I don't have to set up any env variables. Schedules lock-in, all over the web.

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#133

Post by no_shadowban_3 »

hirako2000 wrote: post #132

Oh my, did Anthropic invent Cron jobs as a service? It's a game changer. Edit: my mistake. It's inferior to a Cron job. If my repos happen to be self hosted with Forgejo or codeberg, then it won't even work. If I concede to use GitHub though I don't have to set up any env variables. Schedules lock-in, all over the web.

[dead]

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#135

Post by aspenmartin »

jwpapi wrote: post #120
nickandbro wrote: post #4

I feel like we are just inching closer and closer to a world where rapid iteration of software will be by default. Like for example a trusted user makes feedback -> feedback gets curated into a ticket by an AI agent, then turned into a PR by an Agent, then reviewed by an Agent, before being deployed by an Agent. We are maybe one or two steps from the flywheel being completed. Or maybe we are already there.

I just don’t see it coming. I was full on that camp 3 months ago, but I just realize every step makes more mistakes. It leads into a deadlock and when no human has the mental model anymore. Don’t you guys have hard business problems where AI just cant solve it or just very slowly and it’s presenting you 17 ideas till it found the right one. I’m using the most expensive models. I think the nature of AI might block tha…

I think this sounds like a true yet short sighted take. Keep in mind these features are immature but they exist to obtain a flywheel and corner the market. I don’t know why but people seem to consistently miss two points and their implications

- performance is continuing to increase incredibly quickly, even if you rightfully don’t trust a particular evaluation. Scaling laws like chinchilla and RL scaling laws (both training and test time)

- coding is a verifiable domain

The second one is most important. Agent quality is NOT limited by human code in the training set, this code is simply used for efficiency: it gets you to a good starting point for RL.

Claiming that things will not reach superhuman performance, INCLUDING all end to end tasks: understanding a vague business objective poorly articulated, architecting a system, building it out, testing it, maintaining it, fixing bugs, adding features, refactoring, etc. is what requires the burden of proof because we literally can predict performance (albeit it has a complicated relationship with benchmarks and real world performance).

Yes definitely, error rates are too high so far for this to be totally trusted end to end but the error rates are improving consistently, and this is what explains the METR time horizon benchmark.

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#136

Post by TeMPOraL »

hirako2000 wrote: post #132

Oh my, did Anthropic invent Cron jobs as a service? It's a game changer. Edit: my mistake. It's inferior to a Cron job. If my repos happen to be self hosted with Forgejo or codeberg, then it won't even work. If I concede to use GitHub though I don't have to set up any env variables. Schedules lock-in, all over the web.

You jest, but for some reason the industry stubbornly refuses to solve the "cron job as a service" problem for end-users, whether on the web or in the OS.

I feel this is rooted in problems that extend beyond computing. Regular people are not allowed to automate things in their life. Consider that for most people, the only devices designed to allow unattended execution off a timer are a washing machine, some ovens and dishwashers, and an alarm clock (also VCRs in the previous era). Anything else requires manual actuation and staying in a synchronous loop.

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#137

Post by PurpleRamen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #98
9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t recall if IFTTT had/has a basic cron or not, but it sure has/had put a lot of basic automations in the hands of the general public. Same for Apple Shortcuts, to some extent, or Zapier.

This is a larger topic that's worthy of a comparably large rant, which I really don't want to do right now, but to keep it short, in my subjective view: - IFTTT was great when it started; at some point, it became... weird, in a "I don't even know what's going on on my screen, is this a poster or an app" kind of way. - Zapier is an unpenetrable mess, evidently targets marketers and other business users; discovery is h…

> Or, in short: we need Tasker but for web (and without some of the legacy baggage around UI and variable handling).

n8n, node-RED and others already exist. There are many tools for automations, and I guess most of them can also do cron-like jobs.

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#138

Post by EastLondonCoder »

nickandbro wrote: post #4

I feel like we are just inching closer and closer to a world where rapid iteration of software will be by default. Like for example a trusted user makes feedback -> feedback gets curated into a ticket by an AI agent, then turned into a PR by an Agent, then reviewed by an Agent, before being deployed by an Agent. We are maybe one or two steps from the flywheel being completed. Or maybe we are already there.

I think some type of tickets can be done like this but your trusted user assumption does a lot of work here. Now I don't see this getting better than that with the current architecture of LLMs, you can do all sorts of feedback mechanisms which helps but since LLMs are not conscious drift is unavoidable unless there is a human in the loop that understands and steers what's going on.

But I do think even now with certain types of crud apps, things can be largely automated. And that's a fairly large part of our profession.

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#139

Post by nprateem »

aspenmartin wrote: post #135
jwpapi wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don’t see it coming. I was full on that camp 3 months ago, but I just realize every step makes more mistakes. It leads into a deadlock and when no human has the mental model anymore. Don’t you guys have hard business problems where AI just cant solve it or just very slowly and it’s presenting you 17 ideas till it found the right one. I’m using the most expensive models. I think the nature of AI might block tha…

I think this sounds like a true yet short sighted take. Keep in mind these features are immature but they exist to obtain a flywheel and corner the market. I don’t know why but people seem to consistently miss two points and their implications - performance is continuing to increase incredibly quickly, even if you rightfully don’t trust a particular evaluation. Scaling laws like chinchilla and RL scaling laws (both t…

But the issue isn't coding, it's doing the right thing. I don't see anywhere in your plan some way of staying aligned to core business strategy, forethought, etc.

The number of devs will reduce but there will still be large activities that can't be farmed out without an overall strategy

Re: Schedule tasks on the web

#140

Post by hirako2000 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #136
hirako2000 wrote: post #132

Oh my, did Anthropic invent Cron jobs as a service? It's a game changer. Edit: my mistake. It's inferior to a Cron job. If my repos happen to be self hosted with Forgejo or codeberg, then it won't even work. If I concede to use GitHub though I don't have to set up any env variables. Schedules lock-in, all over the web.

You jest, but for some reason the industry stubbornly refuses to solve the "cron job as a service" problem for end-users, whether on the web or in the OS. I feel this is rooted in problems that extend beyond computing. Regular people are not allowed to automate things in their life. Consider that for most people, the only devices designed to allow unattended execution off a timer are a washing machine, some ovens and…

There is nothing to solve. It's already there, a VPS, a container platform, just push your script and schedule it.

Of course a provider can offer convenient shortcuts, but at the cost of getting tied into their ecosystem.

Anthropic is clearly battling an existential threat: what happens when our paying users figure out they can get a better and cheaper model elsewhere.

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