I think he's polarizing because he's right about the industry and everybody on both sides knows it. Many people in the industry are just selling snake oil. There's also a ton of idiots such as the people who misconfigure cloud software to waste half a million dollars of company money. A truth teller comes off as an a-hole to people who don't want particular truths to be told.
> A truth teller comes off as an a-hole to people who don't want particular truths to be told
If someone is repeatedly threatening physical violence, as the author of this post is, that also tends to come off as an a-hole to some people even if the threats are not genuine.
I agree the author of this post is saying accurate things, and that will piss people off, too.
So we have two completely separate ways in which someone might think the author is an a-hole. They aren't all trying to hide some truth, like you imply.
It is not serious. You shouldn't see it as a literal threat. It's a writing tool. Just like adding "fucking" to something doesn't literally mean that that thing is copulating.
I have read only a few sentences, so it can't be the hard truths that give off this vibe. Saying you are one of the greats based on things someone inexperienced would list underlined by the very short time in the industry comes off as arogant.
>Many people in the industry are just selling snake oil
We have always been selling snake oil - its just the inexperienced and those who have never shipped anything of any value to the world that feel that the snake oil is where the buck stops - but those of us who have shipped tons of snake oil know that eventually that oil congeals and becomes an essential substance in the grinding wheels of industry.
Which this wanker (Disclaimer: Australian, can use it if I wanna, since I know a lot about snakes, too..) seems to not have fully understood yet, as there is a great deal of evidence to support the fact that their experience is mostly academic, and hasn't actually resulted in anything being shipped.
Academics seem too often to forget that software is a service industry and in such a context, snakes and oil are very definitely par for the course.
Nobody cares if you implemented the important bits all by yourself - what are your USERS doing with it? Oh, you don't have actual users? Then please STFU and let the snake wranglers get on with it ..
“ Nobody cares if you implemented the important bits all by yourself - what are your USERS doing with it? Oh, you don't have actual users? Then please STFU and let the snake wranglers get on with it ..”
I got the opposite impression of the article that it was mostly about the fact that companies thought they needed to be to theoretical and academic and in fact taking advantage of AI should be looked at very practically. Granted it’s a long article and he makes lots of points, but I felt like most of the part of section 4 was that you don’t need to implement it yourself and gluing libraries together was probably the right tack, and that most companies were ignoring this in the gold rush of “AI good”.
