Some years ago there was a link here on HN, title was like: "Excel is running 75% of businesses worldwide" (or something like that wording).
I do not see anyone to replace Excel on a larger scale, esp. within large/mega corps where Excel is deeply integrated in processes & systems around specific departments & tasks.
For me a proof toward that direction is that guy who AI-built these Adobe copycats - if he succeeds, then maybe others will follow and try to replace those larger apps.
But honestly: How real is it that even a very good dev with unlimited Anthropic tokens will come up from his basement and show a replacement for Oracle, SAP, Windows, Postgres etc.?
The opportunity is real, though even with AI thats millions LOC that someone would have to manage. And we can see with much much smaller opensource projects that "single/two-dev maintainers" have already a very hard time (and they had already before AI as well!), so I do not see how a small team would be able to maintain it over a longer period.
And most people here saying: "we are manufacturer X and we will replace Oracle with our homegrown solution, then you are basicly no more "manufacturer X" but "manufactuerer X and a software company" - not sure how many companies will be able to go off the rails of their core business?
One example would modeling the costs and revenue for a business unit, the prices from suppliers, the fixed costs of capital, the number and type of employees, the throughput from sales, etc.
One of Excel's many powers is letting people play with numbers in cells and see the results of long chains of computations. Or create an array of potential values and see the results across a wide variety of inputs. Or even use the builtin solver to find the value that minimizes or maximizes a desired output...
interesting, that even in 1960 some were thinking about that "there may be a fixed date of end of the world" - usually you would think those thoughts are exclusive to whatever religion, no: This 66 years ago, a time when there was already enough scientific breakthrough to reflect wisely on the idea of "a fixed end date for end of world"
You may not be wrong but the authors were just picking an example in the headline. In the analysis they calculate t0 as 2026.87 plus/minus 5.50 years. They clearly state what assumptions that is based on do not take it as absolute fact but as providing thought for discussion.
Highly recommend "When We Cease to Understand the World" by Labatut, a lot of it concerns the different strains of apocalyptic thinking among the early 20th century scientists.
Their setup was a typical waterproof setup, placing signs in emergency rooms toptown on cabinets/lockers, trying to find out if there is something about the idea of "awareness" when people are on the stairs to death.
Unfortunately, so far there werent any results.
Another thing I read some time ago: Near Death Experiences seem to vary by culture - if this is true, then there is nothing "universal" down there, instead it proves that we are just concious animals for the short time we are living. If there is some type of "general/universal transcendency" to a "universal god", then why would esp. this "experience" differ by culture here on earth?
So, my personal assumptions is more and more that the universe itself with its basic components is just some type of simulation and we are not aware of it since its beyond our limits of perception and meassurability. And we humans are just one of many species which came into existence by some coincidence/accident.
Gemini is much worse than Claude, maybe I will give Carbon another try - just today I had to use Gemini because Claude went out of available tokens, so I copied some functions into Gemini to discuss and develop them with it:
- It mixes variable names in the output which I inserted correctly just 1 prompt before (like "NameOfficial" as in the class, became "OfficialName")
- It forgot things I posted in the prompt like some definitions in a file 20 min later after coming back from the phone, answer: "while I couldnt see Class XY, I made an assumption..." , heck NO: class XY was posted in the chat as well!)
- one time it inserted two arabic characters before "return XY;"
- It is allergic to C# interpolated strings if the construction is a little bit more complex etc.
Interesting - I had the same feeling but mostly with 4.6 when I "downgraded" for some easier/trivial tasks: The model forget things I posted 20 min ago in the chat (and the same file was in the context as well)
I can clearly remember the 90ies, when it wasnt usual to "be always online", mainly due to limited connections & providers and huge costs in our regions. I can also remember they years when I didnt had "a somewhat permanent" internet connection at home and when I had to pick up my computer, drive it to a friend and connect there to do some downloads :-D
I miss the old forums esp., nowadays everybody posts on LinkedIn and its the "main online place to be"
I do not see anyone to replace Excel on a larger scale, esp. within large/mega corps where Excel is deeply integrated in processes & systems around specific departments & tasks.
For me a proof toward that direction is that guy who AI-built these Adobe copycats - if he succeeds, then maybe others will follow and try to replace those larger apps.
But honestly: How real is it that even a very good dev with unlimited Anthropic tokens will come up from his basement and show a replacement for Oracle, SAP, Windows, Postgres etc.?
The opportunity is real, though even with AI thats millions LOC that someone would have to manage. And we can see with much much smaller opensource projects that "single/two-dev maintainers" have already a very hard time (and they had already before AI as well!), so I do not see how a small team would be able to maintain it over a longer period.
And most people here saying: "we are manufacturer X and we will replace Oracle with our homegrown solution, then you are basicly no more "manufacturer X" but "manufactuerer X and a software company" - not sure how many companies will be able to go off the rails of their core business?
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