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Another One Bites the Dust...

DL Signs

Never go against the family
Saw that a couple days ago... Can't make subscription prices lower, but have billions to buy other companies out :rolleyes:
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Good, maybe Adobe won’t have any money left to buy the Affinity apps.
Doesn't have to be straight money, I think even this one was half money and half stock or some combination thereof.

I'm not really surprised though, I think this is probably the best course for Adobe to continue forward.
 

kcollinsdesign

Old member
I could care less about UX design. Since the advent of no-code development anybody who cares to can develop their own app. The bar to entry is so low that it is not worth my time.

Back in the day, you needed to grow wheat, thresh it, store it, and mill it before you could bake a cake. Now just buy a bag of flour (or go to Nothing Bundt Cakes).

I'm glad I'm nearing retirement. These days you can just speak some prompts to your phone and get a fully rendered illustration. My skills are irrelevant... either that or my unique drawings filtered through years of observation and experience will suddenly become the new hip thing!
 

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
Doesn't have to be straight money, I think even this one was half money and half stock or some combination thereof.

I'm not really surprised though, I think this is probably the best course for Adobe to continue forward.
$20b in stock and cash.

I could care less about UX design. Since the advent of no-code development anybody who cares to can develop their own app. The bar to entry is so low that it is not worth my time.

Back in the day, you needed to grow wheat, thresh it, store it, and mill it before you could bake a cake. Now just buy a bag of flour (or go to Nothing Bundt Cakes).

I'm glad I'm nearing retirement. These days you can just speak some prompts to your phone and get a fully rendered illustration. My skills are irrelevant... either that or my unique drawings filtered through years of observation and experience will suddenly become the new hip thing!

As the world progresses, technology to do things become more attainable.
Plenty of skill are lossed in many industries, but other skills are gained in other areas.

If i didn't develop skills i have today, my business wouldn't be where it's at today with the level of automation we have going. We'd lose customers to those who are moving forward.
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
This post isn't so much about automation, as it is consolidation into one company's control. And how it appears to me, that innovation is not really coming from product improvement, but buying and expanding product offerings (which is one of two ways that a company can stay relevant, and with one way being harder and harder to do with 30+ yr old software and in my estimation has a lot of technological debt to it).


I could care less about UX design. Since the advent of no-code development anybody who cares to can develop their own app. The bar to entry is so low that it is not worth my time.



I'm glad I'm nearing retirement. These days you can just speak some prompts to your phone and get a fully rendered illustration. My skills are irrelevant... either that or my unique drawings filtered through years of observation and experience will suddenly become the new hip thing!


Not really. The bar to entry maybe lower, but still to get anywhere beyond that entry level still requires knowledge and skill. You mention "no code", that will only take one so far as well. Only so much can be compensated with no to low code that to get anywhere more sophisticated requires more knowledge. So while that basic app maybe able to be handled with no to low code, try to get anywhere more sophisticated, it doesn't hold up. Even if that no code framework allowed for actual code snippets in it to handle more complicated stuff. It is still very much opinionated in the direction that one can take.

Same thing with the construction of illustrations.

Or at least how it is now.


The ones that do the best are still the ones that have skills and knowledge of what it's like to be able to handle things that have been abstracted away by automation and go beyond. That know when to use abstraction and when not to use it or know what/how to fix it if something doesn't come out quite right. I see so many that are stuck on things like power trace/live trace/auto conversion (whatever "your" favorite term is) that not only can they not get away from that when they actually need to, but they are also stuck on whatever program that they are used to, because they are used to that unique workflow specific to how that program handles that abstraction. Where as someone that is more comfortable with the more manual and typically more available tools and typically those tools are at the same level from one program to the other, can typically go from one program to the next with less effort compared to someone that needs that same level of abstraction. This isn't even getting into the legal ramification of who owns what just yet with regard to AI generated art. I equate something like this with Github Co-Pilot. And because of that, I would also stipulate a lack of uniqueness to the end result as well. Because operations like this are opinionated in how things are done, there tends to be repetition with the end result as well.

When I was starting to learn digitizing (and this is something that a lot of people depend on automation today, the auto conversion), one mouse click equaled one needle insertion. No "stitch engine", no semi-manual tools even. It was all user. Now the software has their own equivalent to live/power trace (yet it sucks far more and the software costs astronomically more as well) and yet, knowing how to do things manually still puts one ahead of others. While yes, there may be more people able to come in to the market, there is typically a reason why they needed that extra layer of abstraction to get into the market as well. I doubt that that they will be able to go much further than that lower rung of the market.


To even go back to your wheat example. Again, that clears out that lower rung of entry, knowing what wheat to use for what purpose, the technique to mill it etc, but even doing all that, there is still knowledge that has to be used at the end in order to have it still turn out to be something worth eating/selling/whatever the desired end purpose is.

One can take this into animation as well (one of my passions) and with tweening, IK that is far more automated via software compared to frame by frame. Unless one knows how to fix the issues that crop up from time to time doing the more automated ways, it still sticks out. Even though the barrier to entry for those wanting to do animation is less with those animation processes (it also doesn't quite come out the same as really well done frame by frame, but I am biased towards that).
 
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Solventinkjet

DIY Printer Fixing Guide
I could care less about UX design. Since the advent of no-code development anybody who cares to can develop their own app. The bar to entry is so low that it is not worth my time.

Back in the day, you needed to grow wheat, thresh it, store it, and mill it before you could bake a cake. Now just buy a bag of flour (or go to Nothing Bundt Cakes).

I'm glad I'm nearing retirement. These days you can just speak some prompts to your phone and get a fully rendered illustration. My skills are irrelevant... either that or my unique drawings filtered through years of observation and experience will suddenly become the new hip thing!
I read something the other day that is related to this. It said, " AI isn't going to take your job; the kid who knows how to use it will."
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
I read something the other day that is related to this. It said, " AI isn't going to take your job; the kid who knows how to use it will."
See how it is in a few yrs time, right now, it's a glorified web scraper. As it gets used more and more, I have to wonder if the quality of where it sources/learns will still be there?

Ironically, how often do we have problems with people communicating everything that they want? Have to be very specific or else, really have to do post AI cleanup. Either way, there needs to be knowledge there to effectively use it.

Wasn't that the running gag that when had problems with tech, had to go to the young kids for help. Problem for them is, there are other areas of tech that they aren't so good in. We are already seeing it with the huge areas of abstraction that we have now. AI is just another layer.

It seems to me, that the more abstracted that we get with our tools, the dumber we get, because we get lazier about trying to figure something out (which ironically leads to another thread recently on here, but I digress). No matter what tools we are talking about.
 

Solventinkjet

DIY Printer Fixing Guide
See how it is in a few yrs time, right now, it's a glorified web scraper. As it gets used more and more, I have to wonder if the quality of where it sources/learns will still be there?

Ironically, how often do we have problems with people communicating everything that they want? Have to be very specific or else, really have to do post AI cleanup. Either way, there needs to be knowledge there to effectively use it.

Wasn't that the running gag that when had problems with tech, had to go to the young kids for help. Problem for them is, there are other areas of tech that they aren't so good in. We are already seeing it with the huge areas of abstraction that we have now. AI is just another layer.

It seems to me, that the more abstracted that we get with our tools, the dumber we get, because we get lazier about trying to figure something out (which ironically leads to another thread recently on here, but I digress). No matter what tools we are talking about.
I actually have used ChatGPT and it was pretty interesting. I asked it how to fix a Mimaki printhead that has clogged nozzles and gave a nonsense answer. My job is still safe for now! If you ask it very broad questions it does really well. The coolest feature was I could describe a Python script I wanted to make and it just spit it out like it was nothing. It still required some tweeking so you need to know what you're doing to notice what what it got wrong but it was way faster than actually writing it myself.
 

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
The coolest feature was I could describe a Python script I wanted to make and it just spit it out like it was nothing. It still required some tweeking so you need to know what you're doing to notice what what it got wrong but it was way faster than actually writing it myself.
I'm not too surprised, Python has a lot of info/tutorials out there. I think JS would be the next one. A lot of info to go over on the web in that regard. Not all that much different compared to stackoverflow at this time.

Who knows, might make Rust easier to handle (I still prefer my C/C++), not a fan of the barrow checker.
 

netsol

Active Member
it's disturbing when congress votes on something and they think we are making them look like pikers if they spend LESS THAN a $ Trillion

i want a job where i can act like a drunken sailor on shore leave with other people's money (i would be good at it, REALLY!)
 
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