It seems to contradict the paragraph before -- ML as a service seems a terrible idea for the reasons you just listed (among others). What's "Hella Neat" about that?
The problem mostly stems from the vast risk you take on from making a large investment in an unstable/unproven platform vendor.
Servers are relatively fungible, given ops automation; it's painful but not the end of the world if you have to migrate away.
But the technology is still relatively immature in that building your own ML service in house - and having it scale, etc - is still a big pain.
I would immensely prefer it if we first brought ML libraries up to a higher level of maturity - as simple as apt-get install and adding `includes ActiveLearning::Bayes` to your models.
But if a client came to me tomorrow and said "there's this great Amazon API that we're thinking of using" I wouldn't consider that insane on first principles.
Pardon me prying, but what exactly is your experience?
I'm only asking because I've seen "in my experience" sermons delivered by fresh-out-of-college kids one too many times, and have become wary of the phrase.
People who never tried, imagine creating a new product (not to say a "disruptive" product) is a simple A-B-C process:
* talk to potential customers
* do it!
* PROFIT
Whereas unless you are an expert yourself in the domain you're entering, it's almost hopeless.
People/businesses don't know what they want, until it's presented to them on a golden platter and all of their colleagues/competitors are already braying about it.
Totally agree. Programmers should understand the value of intimately knowing the domain. "Customers don't know what they want" is part of the game, and as such is not an acceptable excuse for building poor software.
ElasticSearch sits on top of MASSIVE investment money (closed series B). Your worries about developers needing a "second job" are not substantiated. This is not an evening hobby project of a starving developer.
And there's the rub: investors want their money back.
The pace and aggression with which ES pushes its products and services must only increase from now on. Better get used to it.
Fair points, but I think it's important to highlight the distinction between Elasticsearch BV, (the company - who will try to continue to offer commercial services and support to grow their business - fair enough) and the Elasticsearch project, which is the open source project.
As a company, Elasticsearch BV will reinvest back into the Elasticsearch project, which will increase the adoption and value of their commercial services. Both exist independently, but the success of either improves the other.
"Her" may captivate non-techies and romantic liberal arts majors. But "HUMAN AI AROUND THE CORNER!" must leave anyone who knows anything about AI smiling benevolently.
The guy in the article who says we're basically there sounds like a loon.
Article is titled: "Success at Work, Failure at Home" and they say they can relate to this. Laments that "...comes at a cost: I might not ever be able to have a normal relationship."
I'm not saying working on their project doesn't bring them some happiness, but they hardly sound like they're as happy as they could be.
I agree with your prior statement (happiness should be your goal, and you probably haven't invented 'sliced bread'). You can't 'have it all' if your work makes you more happy than (or is more important to you than) your relationships/home, you should probably focus on that and divorce/leave/whatever so everyone can move on with their lives.
I read the article as a lament. Although maybe I misread and we're both pricks. :D
