IBM Bob • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM Bob

#151

Post by sajithdilshan » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

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".

What do you mean by renting out an agent skill? How can one even rent a Skill? It’s just a markdown file

Re: IBM Bob

#152

Post by ltbarcly3 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

Aww IBM wants to play too. I forgot they were still around.

Re: IBM Bob

#153

Post by flo123456 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

kingleopold wrote: post #125

mrbluecoat wrote: post #15

Totally reminds me of "HP Offers 'That Cloud Thing Everyone Is Talking About'" https://youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8

yet hp exist after decades, just a terrible printer corp going long term is insane really

HP was never just a printer corp. ;-)

Re: IBM Bob

#154

Post by tims33 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

I thought they were resurrecting Microsoft Bob, the operating system for kids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

Re: IBM Bob

#155

Post by arpanghoshal07 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

seems like they used claude for this

Re: IBM Bob

#156

Post by ctoth » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

Who're they subcontracting for the Von Neumann probes?

Re: IBM Bob

#157

Post by nunez » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

Stitch4223 wrote: post #145

That was fast. The copy is "clearly" written with AI… too bad. Some organizations "can't go wrong with Big Blue," so this will probably be a success. Perhaps it's even good, but that's not the case with this sloppy copywriting. First paragraph: focused, what matters, clean. Shame they didn't throw in a "load-bearing" example and a few pelicans to boot.

Bob has been out for a while. It just never got a lot of press. IBM has also been developing more "enterprise" flavored LLMs through their Granite series. In fact they were trying to make small, mission-specific LMs a thing for the last two years or so.

Re: IBM Bob

#158

Post by GaryBluto » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

Stitch4223 wrote: post #145

That was fast. The copy is "clearly" written with AI… too bad. Some organizations "can't go wrong with Big Blue," so this will probably be a success. Perhaps it's even good, but that's not the case with this sloppy copywriting. First paragraph: focused, what matters, clean. Shame they didn't throw in a "load-bearing" example and a few pelicans to boot.

Why so negative? I for one cannot wait for IBM Bob to become the most successful AI solution - nay, product - ever, and eagerly await petrobobcoin eclipsing the petrodollar to become the only truly global currency. They have a CLI with giant ASCII art text for heavens sake! When has anything with giant ASCII art text ever been of poor quality? They made a fork of Visual Studio Code and everything!

Re: IBM Bob

#159

Post by gregce10 » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

[flagged]

Re: IBM Bob

#160

Post by crash-universe » Fri, Sep 04, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

Someone must have thought about this. PMs, Directors, lots of people involved in putting this together.

I wonder what their target customer is. They must have analyzed and projected this. I'm genuinely interested.