Hacker News

points by logancbrown 3 days ago | 0 comments

Reading stuff like this continue to make advances and new releases is like a fever dream when everything else is all AI.

[–] phforms 3 days ago

I wonder if it’s a bubble thing. People carry on and do what they always did, or just began thinking about what to do with LLMs. Big tech companies and startups may have to move fast and adapt, but I guess many other companies and organisations do not have to rush or fear immediate extinction, just because the wind blows in the other direction elsewhere in the world. I see that Hacker News and X are very "noisy" about LLMs (naturally), but that doesn’t mean the whole tech industry must react in the same way.

[–] ramesh31 3 days ago

>"Reading stuff like this continue to make advances and new releases is like a fever dream when everything else is all AI."

Do the advances mean anything though? Alan Kay is a personal hero of mine, I love the aesthetic of Smalltalk, and the dream-that-was once upon a time of such a system was a real missed opportunity for the evolution of programming environments. But is it anything more than a neat hobby at this point?

[–] logancbrown 3 days ago

> But is it anything more than a neat hobby at this point?

It effectively already is. It may end up in the same domain as Haiku OS, Plant 9, or Squeak, but they are all still interesting domains of research.

[–] lproven 3 days ago

An odd typo in there.

Let's hope 9front is a seed, yet to fully germinate.

[–] rfgplk 3 days ago

> But is it anything more than a neat hobby at this point?

The opposite. With LLMs you can now pick up any one of these obscure language and write a full blown AAA game engine in them. Or a database. Or a web framework. Or... anything you set your mind to. The language no longer matters. btw LLMs are exceptionally good at Smalltalk/Haskell/Perl/FORTRAN and other old/uncommon languages.

[–] sanderjd 3 days ago

But would doing any of that be anything more than a neat hobby? I don't mean that in a disparaging way, I'm genuinely curious.

[–] red_candle_wax 3 days ago

> But is it anything more than a neat hobby at this point?

When was it anything else? The 80s? I've can count the number of Smalltalk jobs I've seen in my career on my hand (but I have seen them)