Perhaps I’m being overly simplistic, but I don’t see it as all that different from contractors getting paid to do silly and tasteless renos on McMansions. Objectively a bad way to reinvest one’s money, but it’s a wealth transfer in the direction I prefer, so I’ll hold my judgement.
I had a close call many years ago - my co-workers and I had to talk higher-ups out of a desperate attempt to add something, anything, that is even tangentially related to AI or blockchains, so either or both of those words could be used in an investor pitch...
That's when I fully grokked that buzzword-driven development doesn't happen because someone in management reads a HBR article and buys into the hype - it happens because someone in management believes the investors/customers buy into the hype. They're probably not wrong, but it still feels dirty to work on bullshit, so I steer clear.
Or about launching a Docker container implementing a single, short-lived CLI command.
Or about all the other countless examples of ridiculously complicated and/or wasteful solutions to simple problems that become industry standards simply because they make it easier to do something quickly - all of them discussed/criticized regularly here and elsewhere, yet continuing to gain adoption.
Nah, our industry values development velocity much more than correctness, performance, ergonomics, or any kind of engineering or common sense.
The joke is on all of us if we only treat this as a joke. Rails pioneered simple command line templates and convention over configuration, and it took over the world for awhile.
An AI as backend is the logical conclusion of that same trend.
