Just watched a Mark & Scott segment (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-3I1mLYkxU
) poking at the “apps are dead / SaaS is dead / UX is dead, it’s all just chat now” idea, and it landed for me more than I expected.
What they’re really arguing (I think) is about where you put certainty. If something is repetitive and has real stakes, money, security, compliance, even just “don’t embarrass me,” you don’t want the workflow to live in a conversation you have to recreate from scratch every time. You want the boring version: a stable flow, clear steps, predictable outcomes. If there’s one fuzzy step (like turning a receipt into text), fine, but the rest should be locked down.
The expense report rant is a great example because it’s not even a tech problem, it’s a systems problem. The “solution” shouldn’t be “teach an assistant to click around my terrible UI.” It should be “why does this process still exist like this?” Why are receipts still photos? Why isn’t the transaction data coming straight from the card provider? The automation is kind of impressive, but it also feels like treating symptoms while the disease keeps partying.
They also call out travel booking as the same category: stuff where small errors are expensive. And the “chat is the new interface” take falls apart once you remember that humans still need review screens, structured input, and guardrails. They mention tools that generate little choice menus on the fly, which is interesting (it blurs the line), but it doesn’t change the core point: if you do it often, you should bottle it into something dependable.
Verdict: “please don’t replace good software with vibes.” Enjoyed it.
#software #ux #saas #product #dev
@markrussinovich
@shanselman
![Screenshot of me serpl with Search, Replace, Result List and Preview panes in a command-line interface. Search has /setup and [Match Case] mode selected, Replace has /settings with [Simple] mode selected. The Results List shows about 20 items and the selected file is shown in the preview pane with three replacements in diff-style red/green highlighting on lines 27, 28, and 35.](https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mastodon-aral/media_attachments/files/116/018/395/920/498/956/original/410fe9292b452830.jpeg)