Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#401

Post by ljm » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 10:52 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #167

pclmulqdq wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The go and rust crowds both love writing things in their own language for its own sake. Not because it's a good choice. For a large web backend, go is great. For many other things it's terrible.

Rust is pretty antithetical to resume-driven development because a lot of the stuff that's written in Rust is too well-written and free of the usual kinds of software defects. It immediately becomes "done" and enters low-effort maintenance mode, there's just very little reason to get involved with it anymore since "it just works". Believe it or not, this whole dynamic is behind a lot of the complaints about Rust in t…

A sibling thread talks about language zealotry and this is a textbook example.

I didn’t realise that the only requirement for well-written code is to have an expressive type system and memory safety.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#402

Post by ljm » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 10:54 AM UTC

iamdelirium wrote: post #325

grepLeigh wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider looking at Microsoft, I've always been impressed by the attention to maintaining legacy APIs and backward compatibility in the Windows ecosystem. In my mind, Microsoft is at the opposite end of the killedbygoogle.com spectrum. However, none of this is grounded in real evidence (just perception). Red Hat is another company I'd put forth as an example of a long-term support culture, although I don't know…

I don't understand where this idea that Microsoft doesn't kill projects. Zune, Games for Windows Live, Skype, Encarta, CodePlex, Windows Phone, Internet Explorer. https://killedbymicrosoft.info/

Technically Edge as well, after they nuked their internal effort and switched to slapping Bing ads on a Chrome fork.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#403

Post by pdimitar » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 11:07 AM UTC

hibikir wrote: post #313

pdimitar wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The go and rust crowds both love writing things in their own language for its own sake Hard to take you seriously when you do such weird generalized takes. While it's a sad fact that fanboys and zealots absolutely do exist, most devs can't afford to be such and have to be pragmatic. They pick languages based on merit and analysis.

You are very fortunate: In my 20 year career, I've spent most of it surrounded by zealots, including at very well known firms. I am currently surrounded by multiple teams with extremely tight ideas of what languages they want to work in. All different ideas, yet they are working basically with the same constraints: it's not as if they ware doing very different work where another team's language would be unfit for pur…

What's preventing you from working in a less dysfunctional place, exactly?

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#404

Post by pdimitar » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 11:08 AM UTC

pclmulqdq wrote: post #216

pdimitar wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The go and rust crowds both love writing things in their own language for its own sake Hard to take you seriously when you do such weird generalized takes. While it's a sad fact that fanboys and zealots absolutely do exist, most devs can't afford to be such and have to be pragmatic. They pick languages based on merit and analysis.

Most of the people who use Go and Rust do it for pragmatic reasons. That doesn't influence the culture of the zealots in each community. You should search for headlines on HN that say "written in Go" or "written in Rust" and then compare that to the number of headlines that say "written in JavaScript" or "written in Kotlin."

Those headlines help me understand what I am getting so I seriously have no idea what argument you are trying to make.

You do seem to say Golang and/or Rust devs are zealots which, if it is indeed what you are saying, is boring and plain false.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#405

Post by whstl » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 11:35 AM UTC

marsovo wrote: post #274

whstl wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understandable, but still wrongfully blaming a player rather than the game itself.

I don't think it's wrong to blame people who make life more difficult for others for their own aggrandizement The game doesn't exist without players. I could make more money if I worked at Meta or Amazon, but at what cost? I understand the realities of Game Theory, but then one could argue that being blamed and criticized for one's choices is also part of the game. "Mr Wolfcastle, how do you sleep at night?" "On a bi…

> I don't think it's wrong to blame people who make life more difficult for others for their own aggrandizement

It is, and this is highly judgmental and offensive. Nobody is doing this for "aggrandizement".

Also, all of this is just rationalization, and will keep being until:

1) People start blaming companies for not having the spine to say no to misguided projects by employees.

2) People start blaming Companies for not having the spine to hire people based on past experiences with the craft of programming itself, but rather asking them to have a certain box ticked in their CV.

If one wants to program in X in order to better feed their family and the market says they need to have used X professionally, it is in their right to do X at the workplace.

This is not only expected of them, this is how the whole industry is set up.

They're just following the rules, period.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#406

Post by spyrefused » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 12:40 PM UTC

Lately I've been thinking about the unintended effects that AI tools (such as GPT-based assistants) might have on technological innovation. Let me explain:

Suppose an AI assistant is heavily trained on a popular technology stack, such as React. Developers naturally rely on AI for quick solutions, best practices, and problem solving. While this certainly increases productivity, doesn't it implicitly discourage exploration of potentially superior alternative technologies?

My concern is that a heavy reliance on AI could reinforce existing standards and discourage developers from experimenting or inventing radically new approaches. If everyone is using AI-based solutions built on dominant frameworks, where does the motivation to explore novel platforms or languages come from?

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#407

Post by croes » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 1:16 PM UTC

only-one1701 wrote: post #22

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I wonder how much of this initiative and energy is driven by people at Microsoft who want their own star to rise higher than it can when it's bound by a third-party technology. I feel like this is something I've seen a fair amount in my career. About seven years ago, when Google was theoretically making a big push to stage Angular on par with React, I remember complaining that the document…

> by people at Microsoft who want their own star to rise higher than it can when it's bound by a third-party technology.

Isn’t that the basis for competition?

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#408

Post by croes » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 1:18 PM UTC

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #303

marricks wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is funny because the CEO level one is the easiest to automate

The basic role of a CEO is to be the face of the company and market it to the varioua stakeholders. This is hard to automatize.

Sounds like those AI created influencers

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#409

Post by croes » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 1:20 PM UTC

spyrefused wrote: post #406

Lately I've been thinking about the unintended effects that AI tools (such as GPT-based assistants) might have on technological innovation. Let me explain: Suppose an AI assistant is heavily trained on a popular technology stack, such as React. Developers naturally rely on AI for quick solutions, best practices, and problem solving. While this certainly increases productivity, doesn't it implicitly discourage explora…

Imagine AI was invented 20 years ago.

Webpage design would still be based on tables, massive and complex tables.

Re: Microsoft is plotting a future without OpenAI

#410

Post by spaceywilly » Sat, Mar 08, 2025, 1:54 PM UTC

spyrefused wrote: post #406

Lately I've been thinking about the unintended effects that AI tools (such as GPT-based assistants) might have on technological innovation. Let me explain: Suppose an AI assistant is heavily trained on a popular technology stack, such as React. Developers naturally rely on AI for quick solutions, best practices, and problem solving. While this certainly increases productivity, doesn't it implicitly discourage explora…

I actually think the AI is going to end up creating its own sort of machine code. Programming will be done entirely in natural language, the AI will translate to machine code and we tiny brained humans won’t even know or care what it’s doing under the hood. The idea of programming using a specific programming language is going to seem archaic and foolish.