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by mannanj 3 days ago
No I think we are taking about similar things, but the core of it is this:

- you and other guy believe non-technical people can't build technical things because its still too hard and you need to know the technical things

- I'm saying you don't now, and some the samples I showed are that we are moving in that direction and its possible now, even if most people aren't doing it now. that they could. and its an awareness and comfort problem.

is this right or am I still missing your point?

1 comments

Thanks for trying to summarize.

> - you and other guy believe non-technical people can't build technical things because its still too hard and you need to know the technical things

Pretty much. Though maybe I should more softly phrase it as "you still need to have some idea about technical things." Even more importantly, you still need to have some idea about decomposing problems in a technical way.

What you said:

> the samples I showed are that we are moving in that direction

> and its possible now...its an awareness and comfort problem

So which is it? Are we there, or are we only moving in that direction? Core to my position is the idea that there is a long tail of competences that technical and "product" people have or can fill in the gaps with. Other people don't have these things that are needed to smooth out what AI misses.

Said another way, even if AI has made it 90% of the way there, that still leaves the remaining 90%[0]. Long tails are long, and smoothing everything out such that a truly average person would feasibly whip up a bespoke, reliable backup solution really relies conquering so many edges that technical and product people would never even notice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety%E2%80%93ninety_rule

looks like I had some issues with my thinking. thanks for pointing it out. correcting my stance to: we are going there.

your insights reveal we are actually further away than I thought. But I think I underestimated my skill in using the AI tools and thought the average person could build more than they can.