#33: SAP CAI, AWSome Day, Architect Lies
Hi there,
Fully half the stories in this issue are about lies, breaking up, or saying goodbye. That is NOT the best way to run our first issue after Valentine’s Day. We hope your human relationships are stronger than our software relationships!
-Jelena and Paul
Goodbye CAI - We Hardly Knew Ye
I don't think anyone is too surprised, but sometimes it's cathartic just to say something out loud: SAP Conversational AI is done. Based on what I'd heard (and also what I'd not heard) I don't think it was having too much of an impact in the marketplace…and with all the latest chatbots and GPTs and LLMs running around, it's not hard to see the reason for that product in particular to suffer.
That's the "What's New" section of the documentation, so probably should have seen this coming.
SAP also points the documentation-seeker to an AI page. They plan "to continue to invest significantly into advancing AI".
Enterprise-wise, I think there is still a place for non-GPT-powered chat to exist. The nature of what needs to be done through an enterprise chatbot probably can't be covered by something that hallucinates or gives incorrect information about. Unfortunately, the lack of use cases covered by non-GPT modes of chatbot creation severely limits the possibilities of those chatbots. I think we will likely see a world where the focus is on improving the truthiness of ChatGPT (and similar) rather than improving older approaches. PM
AWSome Day
Amazon’s AWSome day suspiciously sounded like a potential sales pitch but it turned out to be a rather nice 3-hour educational event.
First hour was the AWS Overview presentation that I can definitely recommend to anyone interested or even just “AWS-curious”. The level of technical detail was perfect for an average IT professional such as myself. What I liked most were the specific use case examples provided for each technology or product. This was very helpful in connecting the mental dots and understanding quickly what is what.
Second session was about the AWS console, which looks pretty much like SAP BTP Cockpit with better UI. The last session on innovation was slightly disappointing because 1/3 of it was about… blockchain. It also talked about Amazon Rekognition and I just want to say: can we, as a humanity, finally move away from the product names that are just stupid spelling of normal words? It’s time.
Videos are available on demand here. Registration is not required but you will be prompted to enter your personal information. This information is not verified before opening the videos, wink-wink. JP
ABAP Happenings
As we’ve written before, ABAP Developer edition has been discontinued by SAP in 2022 much to the disappointment of the developer community. But there is still hope folks. An SAP Influence request has been opened here to bring it back. We need all the votes we can get on this one, please power up your SIDs and vote!
SAP Developer Insights survey is open and will be running through March 1st. Please participate to help paint a diverse picture of who SAP Developers are and what is important to them.
Many developers already know about Clean ABAP. But not many are probably aware that you can also participate in improving it. Anyone with a GitHub account can open an issue to propose a change. There are currently 60+ open issues and I hope they will eventually make it through SAP’s rather convoluted review process.
You might be looking at Clean ABAP and thinking oh boy, I wish there was some kind of tool to check for all this stuff automatically. Good news: there is one already, it’s abaplint. I have it on good authority that 46 out of 152 rules it checks are relevant to Clean ABAP. And there is a new blog post on SAP Community about it. JP
ChatGPT, It’s Not You - It’s Me
I was going to write up a reaction to this video that appeared in Acceleration Economy, about the simultaneous overhyping and underhyping of ChatGPT and transformers at large. But as I listened to it I realized that, due to my laser focus on any and all news about ChatGPT, I’d already heard some form of it interwoven through Medium posts and Twitter threads and Hacker News comments. Which is not to say that Tony Uphoff isn’t insightful - it’s more to say that I need to be done with this topic for a bit.
I’ve overdone coverage of AI tools like DALL-E, GPT-3, ChatGPT, and other generative amazingness. I don’t think I’m saying anything new until I give it a rest for a hot minute. So I have three parting thoughts, and then I am self-imposing a moratorium on generative AI topics for me for at least 4 issues. (Oh man I hope I can make it that long!)
Github Copilot and ChatGPT haven’t fully replaced any programmers, but they have absolutely had an impact on those who have taken a minute to try them out for their programming tasks. I have used them to assist me in programming tasks. Developers, embrace these tools and watch your productivity soar.
The generative LLM models are JUST TOKEN PREDICTORS. They’re not sentient/conscious. If you find a happy medium between seeing them for their usefulness but not trusting them for facts, you’re in the sweet spot.
They’re not sentient/conscious, but it’s unsettling to think how smart something can sound just by blasting a bunch of data through math. I reflect on my own thoughts when I think about how GPT and its cousins produce legible and logical words. I am more than a LLM…right?
ChatGPT, we’re going on a break. I hope you can understand that it’s for the best. By the time we get back together we’ll have grown so much. PM
True Lies of Enterprise Architects
The hilarious video Lies Enterprise Architects Told Me by Gwen Shapira is not about the deceptive nature of IT professionals but about how enterprise architects make up lies because…well, sometimes the truth is just kind of hard to explain. Some of my highlights from this best-25-minute-ever-spent presentation:
Lies “we have big data” and “we are building a real time system” are countered by the truth “we have requirements”. This reminded me of this vintage SAP Community blog post by Jim Spath Fast Is Not A Number. Specific measurements vs abstract buzzwords always lead to more interesting conversations.
“Have an escape plan”: if anything goes wrong, how easy will it be for you to change a vendor / provider? Even as the consumers, it’s something we need to keep in mind when signing up for a service / platform. For enterprises, it's a million times more important.
“We use best of breed”: probably the biggest architect’s lie of all time.
Please watch, like, and tell your friends because this type of “edutainment” is what the world needs to see. JP
CSS For Fun And Profit, Except Actually Not Profit
I love messing around with visuals and other interactions on websites. Check out these CSS/JS libraries for making your website look like your favorite PC user interfaces from days past!
First up: NES.css. NES was my first game console, so it has a special place in my heart.
Next: the Windows 95 UI Kit. Windows 95 was the OS on the first PC I could actually use on my own, so a lot of my computer knowledge is cemented in the days of floppy disks and dial-up internet.
Windows 98 moved the ball a little bit down the court, but still felt roughly the same. Use 98.css to make your site really shine.
Windows XP made everything bubbly and blue. I usually set my XP machines to look like 98/2000 interfaces because I didn’t like the look, but it’s grown on me since. XP.css takes you back in time.
But if you’re thinking different, look no further than system.css to give your site a Mac Classic feel. I didn’t get into Mac until OS X Leopard, but the earlier versions always looked super nice.
I would love to have an excuse to make a real product or project with one of these frameworks. PM
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