Next big things that never lived up to the hype, failed, or disappeared without a trace... What do you remember??

[Alex321]

4GLs (4th generation languages). They were going to make all programmers redundant because any idiot now could build programs. That's what "they" said about every innovation in code generation from assemblers to compilers and now AI. It just bumped up the level of abstraction.

Been there. I remeber the 4GL that we attempted to use with an ICL IDMSX database. Can't remember what it was called now.

It worked, but the code it produced was so inefficient we had to rewrite most of it if we wanted to run in a reasonable timescale.

As you say the cost of generated code is losing the knowledge and ability to engineer the lower level to debug issues, especially concurrency and memory leaks. AI is amazing for prototyping but crap at engineering scalable and secure solutions. I've heard of companies laying off loads of developers then rehiring them at double the rate to fix the AI generated mess that nobody, least of all the LLM, has the first clue is doing, or how to fix.

Ai is another tool, and used properly can make a huge difference. Used improperly, it can also make a huge difference in a bad way.

We use Cursor AI here, and I am finding I can do in a couple of days what would have taken 2-3 weeks before (and would have been alot more tedious). But it does rely on developing decent prompts, rules and skills, or it can produce all sorts of junk, rather quickly.

And you still need to thoroughly check the results, and be able to look at the code to see what it is doing.

 

[Dadam]

And you still need to thoroughly check the results, and be able to look at the code to see what it is doing.

You're not wrong, but when you have an AI generated codebase in the 100k or even millions of lines, just understanding what it's trying to do or what the decisions were that the LLM took to generate it, starts to be impossible.

 

[mistyoptic]

I had an argument in Curry's (or was it Comet) about them. They were adamant they were the future. I told them nobody wants to sit round watching a movie wearing stupid glasses. Once the novelty passes they'll live in a drawer for ever and the TV will be used as a normal one. The guy wouldn't have it but I was right.

I attended a "user group" at What Hi-fi Sound & Vision and voiced a similar opinion (not well received). It's cr*p anyway because your brain can use other visual clues to interpret depth. Doesn't need you to look like Joe90

 

[mistyoptic]

Betamax

and V2000

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Been there. I remeber the 4GL that we attempted to use with an ICL IDMSX database. Can't remember what it was called now.

It worked, but the code it produced was so inefficient we had to rewrite most of it if we wanted to run in a reasonable timescale.



Ai is another tool, and used properly can make a huge difference. Used improperly, it can also make a huge difference in a bad way.

We use Cursor AI here, and I am finding I can do in a couple of days what would have taken 2-3 weeks before (and would have been alot more tedious). But it does rely on developing decent prompts, rules and skills, or it can produce all sorts of junk, rather quickly.

And you still need to thoroughly check the results, and be able to look at the code to see what it is doing.

I was talking to the SQL expert when I was in IT

he was searing so much he had run out of swear words and was making more up as he went along
(this was not unusual for him - he was easily annoyed!!!)


anyway - he was looking at some SQL written by a programmer - a proper professioanl programmer

He had been asked to look at it because the program it ran in was a part of the daily schedule

and it was taking around 26 hours to run

and using a shed load of resources while it was running

which was a problem

turned out that the programmer had coded it so that it Selected things in the wrong order - so didn;t uses any indices

for example - searching a database of customers looking for people by address first - rather than order date

anyway - when he changed it the whole thing ran in 56 minutes!!



anotehr one - our team was looking at a system that was needed
The manufacturer said they could supply a system to do it all based on modern tech and stuff
It would need a computer costing £100,000 to run it but it would run fine

we did it ourselves (actually I did) and ran it on the smallest system - which cost less than £1000 and was several years old and had been phased out of the range - we had and it kept running the stuff it was already running and was still logging less than 10% usage



All of which makes me doubt the efficiency of AI - sounds like Artificial Inefficiency to me
might come up with the right result - but does it using massive resources

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

The way you express yourself. Like you have just done here. “No, just you dear” is very much what someone in their 80s might say.

Considering most of the people on here seem to be about said age, I was just fitting in to make you (and the others... But especially you) feel more comfortable in your final years, before you become Ming the Motionless.

 

[nogoodnamesleft]

2012 Olympics. Was going to herald massive take up of sport and activity across the UK public ...

 

[Oldhippy]

In the same way a cycling revolution was underway after covid lock down.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Ah sorry, I was thinking of Skype but said Zoom instead. I guess that's another one that failed so much that I forgot it. But it was sort of a lightbulb invention at the time

Skype didn't really fail, it just got eaten and mismanaged. Microsoft bought it for a zillion gazillion dollars when it was the market leader.

Then MS fannied around with it and tried rebranding it, and then introduced Teams as a direct competitor. Then stood idly by as zoom took over the world during covid. Then got bored with it and shut it down.

You can be that clueless when you have infinite cash.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Considering most of the people on here seem to be about said age, I was just fitting in to make you (and the others... But especially you) feel more comfortable in your final years, before you become Ming the Motionless.

I suspect you are already the most motionless of the two us. Possibly you were born old or you have just aged fast. None of these excuses about trying to fit in. You are just being you 🤣

 

[Yellow Fang]

Imagine windmills and electricity had come together in the 18th century and where we would we be now. Imagine the electric car took hold in the early 20th century, instead of being suppressed by oil interests. Where would we be by now?

I read somewhere that people were building electric cars in the early 20th Century. Henry Ford was sitting next to Thomas Eddison at a dinner function one day, and showed him his calculations for petrol cars versus electric cars. Eddison encouraged him to build petrol cars.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I too was in IT and it seemed like every ten years, everything changes. You learn one bit of software and just when you've mastered it, everything changes.

There was one bit of software, "The Last One". It was a programme generator, which was driven by user input via a Q and A dialogue. Never experienced it, but suspect that it wasn't the last piece of software.

Then Lotus 123, was really good and my favourite, but was pushed to one side by the Excel upstart.

I used to like XTreeGold, and I used it well into the 2000's.

I used to like MultiMap too.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Can you still buy digital cameras these days? I suspect you can, but they were not the big thing they were anticipated to be, because of cameras on mobile phones.

 

[DRM]

I also am sure that Coffee - Bags were a thing at one point too.

They still are, we buy them by the catering size box full, I have a large insulated mug, and a small flask, I make them both up with coffee bags for work

 

[CarbonClem]

Can you still buy digital cameras these days? I suspect you can, but they were not the big thing they were anticipated to be, because of cameras on mobile phones.

Digital cameras are highly sought after by hipster kids. Notting Hill etc markets stalls are full of them. Very popular.
My daughter borrowed an old one of mine for a trip recently. I think by the time she had to come round to transfer the pics from the sd card to our laptop and back to her phone the novelty had worn off.

Polaroid instamatic cameras though ….