The end of the AI beginning

18th October, 2024 @johnallsopp

AI has had many ‘springs’ over the decades, with its promise always just around the corner. In 1970, an early AI pioneer (his legacy is now quite odious) predicted: “In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being.” This wasn’t the last time such […]

2004 all over again

17th October, 2024 @johnallsopp

At the start of this year, I wrote The Internet Is About To Get Weird Again, which began by calling back to the Internet of 2000. In thinking more about it, though, we more closely resemble the Internet of a few years later, where the crash of the dot-com bubble and the stock market had […]

AI and Software Engineering. Part I The impact of generative AI on software development

15th October, 2024 @johnallsopp

One of the most focused areas in the use of large language models, which has arguably seen the best outcomes, is in software development. Both numerous startups and established players in the IDE market now offer generative AI solutions. OpenAI recently launched their ‘canvas’ UI, which is similar to Claude’s UI for working with code. […]

On the web, and optimism

14th October, 2024 @johnallsopp

At last year’s Web Directions Summit one of the attendees (I try to chat to as many as I can) and I had quite a long conversation. His concern was that the keynote talks in particular were a little ‘pessimistic’.  In a sense I could see what he meant. They certainly weren’t unalloyed optimism. Not Techno–Optimism as […]

Weekend reading–the one about web components

10th October, 2024 @johnallsopp

It’s no secret we’re fans of the web platform here at Web Directions—it’s in our name, after all. One aspect of the platform that we’ve long felt is underappreciated is Web Components. Part of this is because support for Web Components, as well as the technology itself, developed gradually over a long period. Until recently […]