[johncolanduoni]

Running an experiment, the experiment being more successful than you thought, and then deciding to put more effort into a bigger experiment is not hypocrisy. It’s engineering. If you think some of the objective facts they’re putting out (like test coverage and performance) are lies, go and prove it instead of appealing to emotion.

[baranul]

Especially if given near unlimited tokens to burn through, because any level of success fuels the LLM hype machine, which brings ROI.

> It’s engineering.

Significantly, but not totally. The marketing value can't be ignored.

[johncolanduoni]

What do you think one would have to pay to have flesh-and-blood engineers get a cross-language port of a codebase of over half a million lines with a broad test suite to over 99% conformance? I think it would be astronomically high, especially given that for this specific project your hiring pool is going to be limited to people who can get up to speed with Zig and JavaScriptCore right away (or you’re going to have to pay them for low output for a while as you train them). Also it would be literally impossible to do in 6 days no matter how much money you paid, so unless they’re lying about that it’s still something that couldn’t have been done prior for any price.

More handwaving about the LLM hype machine is incredibly boring and enough of it is spewed everywhere that whatever social good it was going to accomplish must have already happened by now. If you want to inject reality into the situation, talk about reality (like Anthropic is at least pretending to).

[rkajdh]

The hype machine is real and we will talk about it as long as it pleases us. It took decades to get rid of smoking in public places and restaurants, and the clankers will eventually fall, too.

So cash out before that.

[johncolanduoni]

Did I say it wasn’t real? Or tell you that you couldn’t talk about it? No, I just pointed out that it’s all anybody talks about and it’s boring and doesn’t engage with anything specific about this stunt/project. And I can make melodramatic analogies too — like to the panic about global overpopulation that led to mass sterilizations in The Emergency. Panic is not an unalloyed good, and if you want to fight “the clankers” you should understand what they are and are not capable of.

Also I already cashed out, jokes on you.

[simianwords]

Anti AI cope is unreal, the comparisons to smoking won't stop lol. The mental model of such people (like you) will be studied. LLM's won't go anywhere, keep dreaming.

[sdhAt1]

Studied by whom? Your virtual AI concubine who has you under her thumb? I thought human thinking is obsolete, as can be seen by your comments.

[simianwords]

Sure. Let’s see whether ai sticks or not. Till then whine about it in the internet. Maybe a few would care

[dandellion]

Running an experiment and deciding based on the results is not hypocrisy, it's engineering, 100%.

Saying you have no intention of doing something then doing it is not engineering, it's being dishonest. He could have said "well decide when we see the results", why didn't he?

[johncolanduoni]

If he wasn’t willing to change his mind after he saw the results, then why would he do it at all? Can you explain the false motivation that you think he communicated in the original kerfuffle about this?

[BatmanAoD]

Why are you conflating "no intention of doing a rewrite" with his actual wording, "we haven’t committed to rewriting"? The latter does not at all indicate that there would definitely not be a rewrite.

[awwaiid]

Maybe he didn't think it would work. Maybe even if it does "work" they'll keep the zig version anyway. Maybe further study is needed beyond existing compiling/test-suite. Intentions and perspectives change over time, even only a few days, without dishonesty.

I'm guessing that if I said it ... that we have no intention of re-writing in rust ... that what I mean is "we have no intention of spending the extreme cost it would take to rewrite". When I discover the cost model is completely different that changes things.

[dandellion]

Giving an opinion and making a commitment are different things, wording is important.

If you mean "we have no intention of spending the extreme cost it would take to rewrite" then say that, and it would be fine. If you instead say "we have no intention of re-writing in rust" you've said something very different, using a different set of words, which changes the meaning. Especially, if you say it directly in response to someone asking you whether you're going to rewrite or not like was the case here, and say that there's a high chance you'll just be throwing it away, to get the other person off your back. If then you go ahead and do it, expect them to call you out for it.

This is a very simple concept that can generally be understood by children at around age 4. Trying to cover it with vague terms and using the defence of "well I said I had no intention, and I probably won't do it but you see, I saw the results so I changed my mind so the chance was small but not zero", that's what a slightly older kid will try to do to see if they can get away with it, and as any kid discovers, that doesn't fly.

[renticulous]

This attempt is like shooting for the stars. Most of us software developers are plumbers and we just need to reach to the moon.