[johnfn]

Why would rewriting Claude code, an app which probably has 30-40 (I might be significantly underestimating) extremely active contributors be easier than rewriting Bun, which has fewer contributors and almost certainly also less lines of code?

[weakfish]

Because I’ve been told that Fable can do anything :-)

My question is moreso “why was it ever JS in the first place”

& the cost of a native rewrite would be cheaper than acquiring Bun no matter how you shake it

[jm4]

Probably because it consumes the same APIs originally developed for a web app and the same front end engineers likely created Claude Code. People assume Anthropic set out to create Code as a product and went through a normal design phase. I think it’s more likely it started as an internal tool or someone’s side project and blew up as a product when they released it to the public.

[w4der]

But isn't the point of an API that it abstracts away the language(s) in which your application is written?

[AndrewKemendo]

>Because I’ve been told that Fable can do anything

I hear some version of this anecdote constantly

yet despite using all these prompting tools since 2019 I have never once heard a lab or professional say “x model can do anything”

Can you provide me whatever specific source you heard for this?

[coldtea]

>I have never once heard a lab or professional say “x model can do anything”

Yeah, they "merely" say that they're about to break the singularity in a couple of years, that it's too capable to be safe to release, that it's going to take 50% (or all, depening on the day and audience) of programmers out of work, that it's smarter than Nobel prize winners, that their programmers don't write anything themselves anymore, and things to that effect.

[AndrewKemendo]

Who is “they?”

Again… provide me a quote from someone doing this every day that says: “they're about to break the singularity in a couple of years”

The only people saying this stuff are random Internet commenters, breathless reporters and reactionaries.

The only person on record for a statement like this was Geoff Hinton about radiologists and he has since walked back his statement

[coldtea]

SAM ALTMAN: “We are close to creating a genie that can grant any wish.”

https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2081204789371621744

[weakfish]

It’s hyperbolic and intended to generalize the sentiment I perceive from others.

Dario Amodei said in January that he expected software engineers to be replaced [0], so I suppose the quote should be extended to “can do anything… a software engineer can do”

And I think we can all agree that SWE is on the more complex end of all white collar jobs. So, my thinking is that if SWE can hypothetically be replaced, so can many other jobs. Hence, the claim the models can “do anything” intending to capture the majority of white collar work.

This, of course, is if you take their claim at face value - which I certainly do not.

[0] https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/ai-ceo-says-softw...

[AndrewKemendo]

So then nobody actually has ever said that and its explicitly hyperbole

So then its misleading in the extreme to say “I’ve been told AI can do anything”

It amplifies hype when people make claims like this by including hyperbolic statements as though they are reflective of the state of the discussion.

[weakfish]

Alright, sure, my bad. I thought it was clear that it was meant tongue in cheek, but I’ll accept it was unclear.

That said, with respect what I clarified, I’m curious your thoughts.

[Kiro]

Code is the killer app for LLMs so software developers are the easiest to replace.

[weakfish]

Code isn’t what the majority of software engineering is.

[Kiro]

Pointless nitpicking that completely missed my point. Software developers are not the hardest to replace, so your presumption that everything else should be easier is wrong.

[loosescrews]

I'm doubtful that it has fewer lines of code, but even so, it is almost certainly less tricky and simpler code. You could also rewrite it in a higher level and more forgiving language than Rust (e.g. Go) and get huge improvements. The improvements would probably be much bigger than the improvements they have achieved at the JavaScript runtime level.

[jayd16]

I don't think people are saying it's easier, they're saying the results would be better.

[ronniebasak]

this. /s