akerfonta

Hi HN, OP here. A bit about Transdata:

It started as a scratch-your-own-itch idea from one of our founders (a financial analyst) to solve problems that are impractical/impossible in Excel and such. The overall goal is flexibility and ease of use. The entire tool was written in C++ by a single programmer (me).

Some key differences:

-The flowchart-style GUI (using Qt)

-Ragged data is allowed (non-rectangular)

-No data limit beyond what your computer can handle

-Reusable models

We support "ragged" data (ie non-rectangular) and are a lot cheaper.

I work for a company making a "self-service analytics" tool, but we don't sell it as a "magical analytics" tool that does everything for you. Rather, we see it as a "you don't have to involve the IT department" tool for those quick jobs that analysts or other knowledgeable people would ideally like to do themselves, but can't due to lack of tools.

To me, what is wrongly called self-service analytics is often really self-service reporting. You are consuming the end result, not the analysis itself.

I would say that while there are indeed a number of approaches to various problems, viewing AI as a series of only vaguely connected problems is a mistake. A true AI needs a new way of looking at things as they all relate to the system as a whole.