Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. Today, I just think, "how long would LLMs have taken to write this?" I mourn the death of a human artform.
It's far more exciting than sad. Got an idea that you'd need assembly language for - now you can do it instead of..... never doing it because it would have been impossible for you in any practical way. Look to the positive instead of lamenting something that never would have happened. It's unbelievably exciting that you can now program a computer virtually without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.
Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
111–120 of 246 posts
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand for some people its the display of human wizardy that matters. For me it's about making the computer do awesome things - I do not care how I get there I just want it to do whatever I can conjure in my head.
As much as I enjoy the novelty of asking anime pictures from chatGPT I do not, for a single moment, consider myself a doer of anime pictures. And a fair aside, the result will be "good enough" approximation of what I conjured in my head, but never the thing itself. For me to do the exact thing I conjured in my head it will require to pick up the mouse and draw the rest of the owl. I don't know if that's more telling…
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#113Well done. Been working on a similar smaller project for RISC-V. This is excellent
That's so cool! I would love to see it if you're sharing it anywhere.
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#114I am attempting to write a software renderer in WebAssembly because, for some reason, I feel the need to go against the direction this vibe coded world is going, and I want to feel challenged again. I don't know if I will ever finish it, it is crazy, and by no means useful. But gosh it feels so good. Congratulations to the OP for the accomplishment.
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#115Hmmmm. One of my first assembly projects was a CGI Script 100% in x86 assembly. A full web server is certainly more impressive! Though I'd recommend to beginners to look up CGI and mod_cgi in Apache first lol
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#116I am attempting to write a software renderer in WebAssembly because, for some reason, I feel the need to go against the direction this vibe coded world is going, and I want to feel challenged again. I don't know if I will ever finish it, it is crazy, and by no means useful. But gosh it feels so good. Congratulations to the OP for the accomplishment.
As in 3D software renderer? I cut my teeth on those throughout my teens and the start of my professional career, in x86 and C. I wanted to see how an LLM would do writing one in pure 8088 assembler for CGA and it one-shot a nice demo (I fed it the vectors for the Elite ship in the prompt): https://imgur.com/a/Dy5rUku
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's far more exciting than sad. Got an idea that you'd need assembly language for - now you can do it instead of..... never doing it because it would have been impossible for you in any practical way. Look to the positive instead of lamenting something that never would have happened. It's unbelievably exciting that you can now program a computer virtually without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.
It has always been possible to do it. LLMs are not a particular enabler for that. The difference is that now it is worthless: there is no learning, no person caring about the result, nothing aspirational for the public to look towards... we used to enjoy those challenges, used to be proud of solving complex problems... now? Yeah, whatever, execute execute commit push, let another LLM "review" and call it a day.
What's next, human human contact abstracted away by brain stimulation?
And the transhumanist arsewipes gonna have a field day.
Never too late to ignite the nukes...
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#118I am attempting to write a software renderer in WebAssembly because, for some reason, I feel the need to go against the direction this vibe coded world is going, and I want to feel challenged again. I don't know if I will ever finish it, it is crazy, and by no means useful. But gosh it feels so good. Congratulations to the OP for the accomplishment.
Please post your progress! That sounds cool as hell
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#119Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. Today, I just think, "how long would LLMs have taken to write this?" I mourn the death of a human artform.
Human artform is still alive and well as evidenced by this post. Yes, an LLM can write it, it’ll probably work. Yet, it’ll remain meaningless slop while this is not.
Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning
#120Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. Today, I just think, "how long would LLMs have taken to write this?" I mourn the death of a human artform.
> Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. I'm afraid it's an elite skill in the sense that juggling is also an elite skill. It's impressive for the first few seconds you gaze into it, but once the novelty factor wears off you understand that it's wasted effort that leads to a project that suffers from a massive maintainability problem, is limited in which platforms i…
In the same way we appreciate Japanese wood joinery, why not not just appreciate this? Someone might even learn a trick or two reading it.