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Domain expertise has always been the real moat

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Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#541

Post by DanielHB »

repstosb wrote: post #479
DanielHB wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are underestimating how hard it is for average joe to learn programming basics. I remember a fellow in high school that just could not accept that = in programming is assignment not an equation (like in high school math)

You went to high school with Niklaus Wirth?

No, that actually happened. I actually knew pascal used := (I programmed quite a bit of pascal/delphi myself back in the day) but I never knew its inventor ever made a big deal about the assignment operator until I posted this.

But that was just an offnote observation, when I got to college I already knew how to program but MANY of my student peers had A LOT of trouble in the first year grasping the basics. These were not dummy students, they were top ~3% of students in the college entrance exams.

At least 50% of my class didn't understand pointers properly by then end of first year.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#542

Post by wiseowise »

ElProlactin wrote: post #448
wiseowise wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI. I personally know a few who have been successful in acquiring initial customers. It'll shake your world, but tech-savvy non-developers were building and shipping long before AI. > they probably have a better intuitive sense for digital product design than a 30 or 40-something engineer who has been staring at an IDE for the pas…

> It'll shake your world, but tech-savvy non-developers were building and shipping long before AI. They weren't building and shipping by themselves though. They were hiring people to do the work. AI has made it possible for people with motivation and time to do what was previously only possible with motivation, time and money. > Because developers only stare at IDE 24/7, and never interact with anyone besides mother…

> They weren't building and shipping by themselves though.

Yes they did, all the time. You just need to get out of your tech bubble.

> AI has made it possible for people with motivation and time to do what was previously only possible with motivation, time and money.

Nonsense. AI simplified it, but programming was always accessible to the masses. They might not have shipped full blown SaaS products, but people have been programming with Excel, Access, Python, JS forever.

> Why is so hard to acknowledge the fact that many of the people who are good at developing aren't as good at coming up with ideas for digital products and building businesses on them?

Because it's a complete straw man detached from reality.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#543

Post by bigfatkitten »

detourdog wrote: post #409
bigfatkitten wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CU-SeeMe worked pretty well in 1995 if you had access to a half decent Internet connection, which admittedly most people didn’t. For well funded organisations, ISDN video conferencing facilities were reasonably common.

Verizon in NYC was trying to make ISDN happen in the home in the mid 90's. I had it. The hard part was getting an ISP that supported SLIP.

In Australia ISDN was available pretty much everywhere to any residential customer who wanted to pay for it, but it was not particularly popular. It was widely used by businesses, however.

The main reason was that the line rental was significantly higher, POTS lines had untimed flat rate local calls, whereas ISDN didn’t, and ISPs charged more for ISDN plans.

Towards the end of the 90s that changed for voice calls, and so a fair number of folks who couldn’t get ADSL for one reason or another got DoV (Data over Voice) Internet services. This is where you make a single channel ISDN “voice” call, and then use it for 64Kbps data. Most ISPs supported it on ordinary dialup plans.

This gave you significantly better speed, and much improved latency compared with what could realistically be achieved with V.90.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#544

Post by gerdesj »

maccard wrote: post #104
gerdesj wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are an additional tool to add to your arsenal. They are not omnipotent and need care, just like any other tool. My best effort, so far, at an analogy is a modern drill driver compared to a screw driver/brace and bit/etc: You can get some remarkable results in a very short time compared to the "old school" gear. You can get some "amazing" anecdotes eg "I screwed down an entire floor at 16" x 1" c/c within an hour…

But a modern drill absolutely 100% removes the need for a brace and bit. An LLM doesn't replace any existing tools.

There are times when you quite literally need to feel the thing you are drilling into and a brace and bit give you feedback that a drill driver wont.

Pretty sure I once saw a surgeon using a brace and bit for something unpleasant. I think it was brain/skull related.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#545

Post by taneq »

vmurthy wrote: post #324
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #309

While I agree that domain expertise has always been a moat, I believe the author is missing something critical: there is a big difference between being able to verify the output of a system is correct, and being able to tell a system how to generate the correct output to begin with. Personal example: I had a software engineering colleague who was the best coder of financial management systems I've ever encountered. H…

>One of the things he told me, and that I also observed, was that the vast majority of financial experts (basically, the people in the accounting department of companies) had an extremely difficult time just telling him what the rules of any particular transaction should be We have internalized more knowledge than we can explain sounds like the textbook definition of Polanyi's paradox:"Polanyi's paradox, named in hon…

This reminds me of that quote about how if our brains were simple enough for us to understand, we'd be too simple to understand them.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#546

Post by halfcat »

vmurthy wrote: post #324
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #309

While I agree that domain expertise has always been a moat, I believe the author is missing something critical: there is a big difference between being able to verify the output of a system is correct, and being able to tell a system how to generate the correct output to begin with. Personal example: I had a software engineering colleague who was the best coder of financial management systems I've ever encountered. H…

>One of the things he told me, and that I also observed, was that the vast majority of financial experts (basically, the people in the accounting department of companies) had an extremely difficult time just telling him what the rules of any particular transaction should be We have internalized more knowledge than we can explain sounds like the textbook definition of Polanyi's paradox:"Polanyi's paradox, named in hon…

The body can know more than it can tell.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#547

Post by halfcat »

dapperdrake wrote: post #507
Toutouxc wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your point that people “from” the domain aren’t automatically equipped to start AI-building software in the domain, exactly because they often lack one of the most crucial software development skills — being able to (and having the desire to) describe a complex system with a finite set of deterministic rules. But I don’t think we should be calling these people “domain experts”. I think we should reserve…

Then there are almost no domain experts.

There’s at least one

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

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#548

Post by ElProlactin »

emodendroket wrote: post #508
ElProlactin wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me you're more interested in semantics than the substance of the discussion. Why not consider the possibility that AI is creating something new? I would argue that the non-developers who are able to use AI to build, ship and sell software aren't "self-taught software developers". The biggest reason is that they're effectively not learning how to code in any meaningful way. They don't need to. AI is gettin…

I bought a book however many years ago with no previous development experience and delivered a Web app people paid for and eventually honed that as an actual career, so I’m just not really seeing what’s a difference in kind here. I also disagree with the “democratization” frame because now developers are spending like $1000 per month on tokens at their jobs, which does the opposite of making things more accessible.

> I bought a book however many years ago with no previous development experience and delivered a Web app people paid for and eventually honed that as an actual career, so I’m just not really seeing what’s a difference in kind here.

So you taught yourself how to program. Do you not see that there's a difference between teaching yourself how to program so that you could build a web application and using a new technology that allows you to build a web application without having to learn how to program?

I get that people have differences of opinion but it seems to me like you're being intentionally obtuse here. Learning how to program to build web applications is not the same as learning how to use a new technology that can build web applications for you without you having to learn how to code.

> I also disagree with the “democratization” frame because now developers are spending like $1000 per month on tokens at their jobs, which does the opposite of making things more accessible.

I'm curious: if you're already working as a developer and your employer values your skills, why do you have to spend anything on tokens? Are you not able to do your job satisfactorily without AI?

The "democratization" has nothing to do with people working as developers. The "democratization" refers to the ability of a growing number of smart, motivated people who don't know how to program to create working software using AI.

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#549

Post by ElProlactin »

batshit_beaver wrote: post #530
ElProlactin wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That last sentence is verifiably false if you look at SWE job postings and their recovery since 2022. Source? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE And it's probably worse than it looks because phantom job postings are a real thing. > ...who nonetheless continue to hire large numbers of SWEs while paying double the market rate. Tech companies have laid off over 200,000 people since the beginning of…

Yes that’s the right source. There would be no recovery in SWE market after the higher interest rates killed it if LLMs had any major impact on SWE employability.

You have a very interesting definition of "recovery".

Re: Domain expertise has always been the real moat

#550

Post by ElProlactin »

wiseowise wrote: post #542
ElProlactin wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'll shake your world, but tech-savvy non-developers were building and shipping long before AI. They weren't building and shipping by themselves though. They were hiring people to do the work. AI has made it possible for people with motivation and time to do what was previously only possible with motivation, time and money. > Because developers only stare at IDE 24/7, and never interact with anyone besides mother…

> They weren't building and shipping by themselves though. Yes they did, all the time. You just need to get out of your tech bubble. > AI has made it possible for people with motivation and time to do what was previously only possible with motivation, time and money. Nonsense. AI simplified it, but programming was always accessible to the masses. They might not have shipped full blown SaaS products, but people have b…

> AI simplified it, but programming was always accessible to the masses.

So basically you're referring to self-taught developers.

Repeat after me: learning to program so that you could build something is not the same thing as prompting AI to build something for you.

Previously, to launch anything of any real substance, you either had to teach yourself how to program or pay a developer. AI has given people a third way that does not require them to do either. This is expanding the size of the market for non-developers who are building and shipping digital products.

> Because it's a complete straw man detached from reality.

If you really believe the argument that "many of the people who are good at developing aren't as good at coming up with ideas for digital products and building businesses on them" is detached from reality, why isn't every engineer a multi-millionaire or multi-billionaire business owner? Why would anyone work for Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos for 6 figures a year when they could easily knock out their own digital products making 7, 8, 9 or 10 figures a year and be Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos?

It's just common sense that different people have different aptitudes. Some people are extremely talented at writing code; it doesn't mean they can come up with a business idea and actually execute it.

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