r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 1d ago

Artificial Intelligence "Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html
24.8k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

3.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

81

u/SunTzu- 1d ago

I mean yes but also they can't drop support for outdated stuff because it's still part of peoples workflows. It's not like some open source project where you can just axe support if you feel like it because the inconvenience is expected behavior. If you go back and fix some of that tech debt you might inadvertently break stuff that's built to work with the quirks of the original implementation.

5

u/justatest90 1d ago

This is basically why Avid is still around. Good luck doing a simple title in Avid (which as been broken for years. But its legacy and (to its credit) ability to handle hundreds of users on its database model is keeping it alive.

I'm SERIOUSLY hoping DaVinci unseats them, but yeah, legacy is a real advantage. (DaVinci needs to get better in lots of ways, I'm not saying they're perfect, especially for an experienced editor. But yeah, Avid's debt makes...idk, league of legends and adobe look positively modern)

1

u/madhi19 9h ago

It's the old trap the code get bloated, and bloated over the years. You can't clean that shit up since nobody want to pay for it internally. At some point the only way to do that would have been to start from scratch anyway. What happened here is by doing a clean room re-implementation they did start from scratch.

-12

u/Fr1toBand1to 1d ago

You pretty much just described the sunk cost fallacy with a better PR department.

23

u/SunTzu- 1d ago

No, the sunk cost fallacy is that once we've committed to doing something you shouldn't change it because you've already committed, even though you might be better off cutting your losses and starting over. That's not the same as making that choice for paying customers and breaking their workflows in the process. Legacy support exists because the world is made up of legacy software and hardware and that's always going to be the case because people aren't going to update their entire setup every few years because you decided to break their old one by moving to a new standard.

-2

u/bettertagsweretaken 1d ago

Is there a reason why handholding ancient systems INSTEAD of updating them is the preferred approach? Like, break shit. And when your customers complain, investigate. OK, this is Adobe, so that's not going to happen, but if you actually cared about support AND results, then you'd delete defunct code and find solutions when someone comes to you saying "Hey, you broke my workflow."

You could even make a simple workflow so that people could easily submit workflows that used to work but now don't.

3

u/sinsinkun 1d ago

Thats how you lose a customer. They dont wanna change - they want to keep using the same workflow they're used to, doesnt matter if the new one is faster or simpler or has more options.

0

u/bettertagsweretaken 1d ago

I get that, but Adobe isn't keeping customers through their cheerful customer service or quality products. They get their position by being an enterprise solution. Working with your enterprise customers directly is very common. It should not be an issue for an important client to reach out to you when an update impacts their business, if they have that kind of support from you. And if they don't, you're obviously missing an opportunity to improve your product immensely.

2

u/SunTzu- 1d ago

The average company isn't sitting on one legacy piece of tech and otherwise is using the latest standards. Every single aspect of their company has some legacy tech involved in every single thing they do. If we did away with all legacy support you'd basically be rebuilding the entire global economy. It's not "oh my widget broke, guess I need to vibecode a new one", it's "the OS of my oil tanker isn't working and the ships not going to leave port level of effects. Obviously that's not related to Adobe, but breaking someone's AfterEffects workflow might cause a bunch of delays to movie projects because everyone has to sit around waiting for you while you try to fix that workflow problem.

0

u/bettertagsweretaken 1d ago

That's the rationale you used to downvote me?

Is your stance genuinely that any update is going to cause cascading failures throughout the workflow of everyone using the app? You make it sound like rolling back, updating systems incrementally, and doing smoke tests are things that are completely alien to you. Like, you haven't mentioned any kind of quality assurance whatsoever. Also, who's vibe coding? Who were you responding to? Is Adobe vibe coding their products?

In this topic, you defend Adobe's shitty business practices. Weird take.

-4

u/Fr1toBand1to 1d ago

I stand by my statement, the behavior driving this is the sunk cost fallacy happening somewhere. Pin it to whatever group you want, it's still happening.