Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM Bob

bob.ibm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 351 posts

Re: IBM Bob

#111

Post by throwyawayyyy »

exakoustos wrote: post #64

The "What developers say" carousel has a single Java dev and dev advocate. They got lots of quotes from managers, directors, CEOs, and an "AI strategist".

Lots of "performance review boilerplate, I don't want to say anything _bad_ about this person but there's nothing particularly good I can say" energy there.

Someone decided that this feedback was worth highlighting:

"Bob demonstrated a level of intelligence and contextual understanding that goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools. Bob goes beyond anything I've seen in other tools."

Re: IBM Bob

#112

Post by esseph »

Skwid wrote: post #99
exakoustos wrote: post #64

The "What developers say" carousel has a single Java dev and dev advocate. They got lots of quotes from managers, directors, CEOs, and an "AI strategist".

If you search those names you'll find most have a LinkedIn page proudly displaying their many "IBM Influencer" achievements and qualifications. I realise LinkedIn is a surrealist caricature of corporate reality, but just imagine proudly displaying your #1 shill award for all to see

> I realise LinkedIn is a surrealist caricature of corporate reality

I don't think it's a caricature of reality at all, it very much is like the large US corps I've worked at.

Re: IBM Bob

#113

Post by azinman2 »

qsort wrote: post #33
Stevvo wrote: post #18

Interesting they are renting out agent skills. You can pick up "Java Modernization" at $20 a month for "Specialist workflows to help with modernizing Java applications", or "IBM i" for "Specialist modes, workflows, and skills to work with IBM i applications".

markdown as a service is crazy

Is it that diff from code as a service? It’s human intent transcribed into something useful.

Re: IBM Bob

#114

Post by varispeed »

argentinian wrote: post #105
varispeed wrote: post #24

The companies who are hoarding RAM to produce pointless products should be called out. Deprive working class from computing resources to sell some corporate crap. Get fucked.

If they produce pointless products then they will lose money.

That money will not "trickle down" in either way.

Re: IBM Bob

#115

Post by Angostura »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #65

You should never name a tech product Bob in the UK, because the moment it isn't perfect, it'll just get called "Bobbins" [0], especially where I'm from. I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money.…

Never enough Frank Sidebottom on here

Re: IBM Bob

#116

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #65

You should never name a tech product Bob in the UK, because the moment it isn't perfect, it'll just get called "Bobbins" [0], especially where I'm from. I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money.…

You should also never name your faulty/flaky Dell server Bob when Bob is also the name of your company president (though the president came after the server).

Calling Bob (the server) a piece of shit ("Bob is a piece of shit") because it crashed again was a very risky move that we often didn't fully think through.

Re: IBM Bob

#117

Post by torgoguys »

gertrunde wrote: post #95
PaulRobinson wrote: post #65

You should never name a tech product Bob in the UK, because the moment it isn't perfect, it'll just get called "Bobbins" [0], especially where I'm from. I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money.…

tbh - my first thought, especially with that figure and marketing, is "Bob the Builder"... [Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_the_Builder_(character) ]

My first thought was it was going to be "Microsoft Bob for the AI Age" or something. I didn't look too closely -- maybe it is!

Re: IBM Bob

#118

Post by getatme32 »

EagnaIonat wrote: post #109
kbwal7 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's just a harness that uses proprietary (or maybe IBM is hosting open weight?) models. They say on the site (in the FAQs) that you can't even choose which model! So it seems to be a harness that auto-routes your queries with no way to change this.

You are correct. It routes to the model best suited for the ask. The only positive versus others is that at an enterprise level you have more control of the costs with the coins.

except they tack on surcharges to all token calls to Claude and GPT

Re: IBM Bob

#119

Post by jenkstom »

kbwal7 wrote: post #106
cisrockandroll wrote: post #44

Is this just a harness or using a proprietary model in the background? Anthropic and OpenAI are already very well trained in IBM system i and z knowledge. Unless Bob is somehow improving the integration to these midrange and mainframe systems I literally dont see any benefit to using Bob. IBM will just kill this proprietary tech in 5 years as they are currently doing with RDi or forget about updating it like SEU.

I think it's just a harness that uses proprietary (or maybe IBM is hosting open weight?) models. They say on the site (in the FAQs) that you can't even choose which model! So it seems to be a harness that auto-routes your queries with no way to change this.

IBM has models trained for older mainframe usage (RPG II, RPG/400, COBOL, etc) so I imagine it would be very good for that. Bob looks like a branded fork of vs code or vscodium.

Re: IBM Bob

#120

Post by makerofthings »

podgietaru wrote: post #82
basisword wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in the UK and never heard of this in my life. Guessing this is very regional?

As with most things on the UK, probably. I definitely used Bobbins. I used to think everyone called (cobs|bread cakes|rolls|barns) muffins, and it turns out it was just my small town that did it. As in, just my small town, not region, county, etc.

It's definitely chip muffin. I have no patience for those heretics up the road with their chip barms.
Post reply on HN