That's a weird way to look at it. Any car gets you to your destination, but some people prefer driving a sports car or an SUV. They get something out of it that isn't just a marketing delusion, but subjective joy from the interaction with one product over another.
The car metaphor isn’t working. SUVs range from $30k to $500k and up. Sports cars range from $30k to $500k and up. Sedans range from $30k to $500k and up.
I used to love sports cars because I’d get out to the track a few times a year, and enjoyed the performance engineering in them.
Today I enjoy and drive a SUV because I enjoy camping in remote locations that my old (awesome) sports car would not begin to be able to get to. In the future if I decide to build my own house, odds are I will find a pickup truck is a better fit than either sports car or SUV.
It’s weird to see these choices through the lens of marketing. Marketing may influence which vehicle I buy, but it’s hard to imagine sports car marketing tricking me into buying a Ferrari to go camping.
Attributing all joy and personal preference people experience to marketing influence is a pretty cynical take, and also a pretty inaccurate and overly simplistic one: Some people might never be reached by a marketing effort, yet buy a specific car because they remember a childhood story, or like pronounced rounded shapes, or because the interior design appeals to their sense of fashion.
Or more specifically, for the case of coding agent harnesses, where many developers have experimented with a wide range of tools - someone might just favour the interactions with a specific one from their personal experience. Entirely unrelated to marketing.
Yes, of course not all personal preference is caused by marketing, but much of it is. Actual personal preference is whether you prefer running or cycling, the marketing part is which running shoes or which bike you buy.
> or because the interior design appeals to their sense of fashion.
Surely you'll grant me that the sense of fashion is mostly marketing in sheep's clothes?
Yes, I'll grant you that the choice of a coding agent harness is influenced by marketing to a much lesser degree than eg cars. I still think Anthropic does marketing way better than OpenAI!
[Edit:] I use the pi.dev agent. I was heavily influenced by its marketing: minimal and mit-licensed and espoused by the HN crowd. Do you think I read the source code and made an actual informed decision? Nah...
Luxury cars are indeed a good comparison. The subjective joy is a result of the delusion. That is why so much money is spent on such marketing to begin with. The analogous comparison would be if a blindfolded passenger turned out to prefer the Sienna to the 911.
I suspect a blindfolded passenger might prefer the Sienna. I can imagine it might be easier to get carsick blindfolded in a 911.
But also, as a driver, there is a clear difference between a Sienna and a 911. The differences are objective, but of course the preferences are subjective.
I would actually say it is a luxury car where you have your personal driver and you are free to work on other tasks, and it gets you faster to the destination. Time to me is at least the most valuable thing.
Imagine you try two products you’ve never heard of. You prefer one over the other. Was it marketing? That’s what’s happening here. Marketing can get you to try something you wouldn’t have otherwise, and it may suggest benefits you’d get if you tried it, but your preference of using one thing or the other is a subjective experience of your own.
> Imagine you try two products you’ve never heard of. You prefer one over the other. Was it marketing?
No, obviously not.
> That’s what’s happening here.
No, that's not what's happening here.
> Marketing can get you to try something you wouldn’t have otherwise, and it may suggest benefits you’d get if you tried it, but your preference of using one thing or the other is a subjective experience of your own.
Marketing can very much shape your preferences and create wishes you didn't have before. That's why companies invest so much money in marketing.
