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Malleable Software

mdubakov.me

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Re: Malleable Software

#51

Post by movedx »

tossandthrow wrote: post #45

Yes and no. Malleability is opposed to institution. When everything is hyper malleable everybody will need to be trained and change management will take up a large proportion of time. The main reason why a lot of people go with Jira is not quality of the software - but the institutional buy-in. Employees, current and prospect, know how to work with the tool. The greater change is likely labor disruption.

> Employees, current and prospect, know how to work with the tool.

Just an FYI, this isn't the case at all. I've contracted and consulted at well over 20+ business at this point, and no one knows how-to use that hot garbage.

Re: Malleable Software

#52

Post by hbogert »

> The biggest shift LLMs bring to malleable software is moving the focus from designing the solution to defining the problem.

people who know how to formulate the problem already rule the world. AI will just be a catalyst.

If you have good market fit it means you were lucky or you knew which problem your potential customers had.

Re: Malleable Software

#53

Post by marcuschong »

OtherShrezzing wrote: post #33

I think most of the SaaS stuff that benefits from being malleable already is malleable - just slowly malleable. I can configure a Trello or GitHub Actions in whatever way I want. Meanwhile I really want my email, messenger, or banking apps to be exactly the same every time I use them. I'm not clear how adding a non-deterministic UI or business logic layer is going to fundamentally disrupt or improve experiences like…

I agree with you, though I’m not sure I fully understand your point about game studios. That seems like an area where software could evolve in ways that make perfect sense. For example, dynamic worlds, unique missions, unscripted characters, and so forth.

Re: Malleable Software

#54

Post by OtherShrezzing »

marcuschong wrote: post #53
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #33

I think most of the SaaS stuff that benefits from being malleable already is malleable - just slowly malleable. I can configure a Trello or GitHub Actions in whatever way I want. Meanwhile I really want my email, messenger, or banking apps to be exactly the same every time I use them. I'm not clear how adding a non-deterministic UI or business logic layer is going to fundamentally disrupt or improve experiences like…

I agree with you, though I’m not sure I fully understand your point about game studios. That seems like an area where software could evolve in ways that make perfect sense. For example, dynamic worlds, unique missions, unscripted characters, and so forth.

My comment is about companies self-serving with malleable & bespoke software. Niantec is unlikely to spend time making a bespoke GenAI version of Jira, just because it's cheaper to do so now than it was before. Every minute they spend making the bespoke project management software is a minute they're not making the next PokemonGo, so they'll pay a third party like Confluence handsomely to produce a predictable project management UI for them.

Games studios have been making dynamic worlds for decades now, and GenAI algorithms are just an evolution of that practice. So I agree that they'll use these tools for their own output, but that output isn't going to disrupt the SaaS business models of companies like Sage/Confluence/Microsoft etc.

Re: Malleable Software

#55

Post by zOneLetter »

cpursley wrote: post #48
o_m wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter argument: people want simple systems that are easy to update, secure, deploy etc. I've been burned so many times by being an early adopter of a simple product for it to add too many features and shifting focus along the way, leaving the early adopters as second class users. This usually happens because investors wants a return on their investment by enshittifying the product. As self hosting with Docker and g…

What percentage of companies do you think have the technical know how to even fire up their own cloud application and database instance even with all the LLM assistance in the world? Outside of companies in the software space and some of the largest orgs, I’m gonna guess maybe 20%?

Don't forget the audits and compliance reports. No company with a C-suite with more than 3 brain cells combined will be going down that route. People forget that hobby-projects do not have the same legal and business requirements as ... enterprise projects.

Re: Malleable Software

#56

Post by javcasas »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #18
actionfromafar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whole governments run in that mode now.

Our Governments AI says we never paid our taxes, Our AI says it paid our taxes, our CEO says nobody should pay taxes, and our VC's AI says we're broke and a Unicorn at the same time.

Yup, that should be recorded and shown in Netflix. Pure entertainment.

Now put all these actors in the same room with a bomb, tell them to agree on the situation of the taxes or the bomb explodes, and you have one hell of a drama.

Re: Malleable Software

#57

Post by a57721 »

mhogers wrote: post #17

data layer > business logic layer > presentation layer I believe the presentation/analytics layer has become malleable, possibly parts of the business logic layer - you still need a higher % of trustworthiness than LLMs can provide for parts of the business and data layers.

> you still need a higher % of trustworthiness than LLMs can provide for parts of the business and data layers

For many domain-heavy systems, it's not even the trustworthiness; just getting the business logic right requires a lot of work and lots of iterations with in-house domain experts and clients, there's no way LLMs can do that.

Re: Malleable Software

#58

Post by rco8786 »

> AI thrives in messy, open-ended spaces

Isn't the exact opposite of what AI is good at? That sounds like a great way to get tons of hallucinations. Every "how to AI good" guide I read is all about providing it with ample structure and narrow instructions.

Re: Malleable Software

#59

Post by api »

I’ve been wondering how long it will be before AI can “pirate” SaaS by using it and synthesizing an acceptable replacement. SaaS used to drive real world services would not be amenable to this, but a lot of SaaS is just a UI in front of Postgres. I could see this being possible for anything “thin” like that.

Re: Malleable Software

#60

Post by ewf »

Malleable and opinionated aren't mutually exclusive. The best products that solve non-core business processes should be opinionated, that's their value prop.

But yeah, the demand for webhooks, integration options, embedding's will win IMO. I imagine more demand for API-first products.

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