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Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

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Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#131

Post by locknitpicker »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #120
locknitpicker wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What an odd take. It is often titled "software craftsmanship". Is the craftsman not allowed to practice? Not everything needs an immediate real-world application. Not everything needs to be enterprise-grade, bulletproof, web-scale or whatever. It needs to work for the creator, and sometimes not even that. In the same way we appreciate Japanese wood joinery, why not not just appreciate this? Someone might even learn a…

> What an odd take. It is often titled "software craftsmanship".

No, not really. This is exactly the opposite example of software craftsmanship. Software craftsmanship involves things like technical excellence in delivering maintainable software that is adaptable to change.

Picking assembly, of all things, for a web server represents a complete failure in the analysis of both the problem and solution domain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_craftsmanship

This sort of project is more in line with parlour tricks, juggling, and stunt shows. Trying to frame this sort of project as software craftsman is like discussing the whole Jackass series as cinema next to Hitchcock and Scorcese. It may take skill and practice to be punched in the nuts, but that doesn't make it a craft.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#132

Post by moregrist »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #127
nzhsbdb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The result is unimpressive either way -- it's the journey that is exciting for these kinds of projects

Nah. I'm not going to yearn for the days of hitting steel on an anvil when we can have steel produced in a factory.

Have you ever done blacksmithing? It’s tremendously satisfying.

Sure, if you want 300,000 spoons, it’s far better to use a factory process and get essentially identical results. But if you only want a few spoons and accept (or even value) that the spoons will all be a little different, hand-forging them is quite enjoyable.

I’ve written enough assembly and done enough blacksmithing to know that the metaphor isn’t quite apt. But there’s both tremendous effort and satisfaction involved in both.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#133

Post by noduerme »

yolo3000 wrote: post #125
noduerme wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometime around when wordpress came out, or at least 2005 or so, I started positioning myself as a bespoke web designer, then app developer. Whereas anyone could get a site done, I turned myself to doing things that hadn't been done before, for which standard solutions wouldn't fit. I turned away 80% of jobs and raised my rate from $25 to $100, then to $300/hr. To me, pricing and only doing bespoke work was a defensi…

So what could you do that people paid you 300/hr? And how long where these gigs?

Basically coding, explaining, and owning the whole stack from the DB schema to the CSS. In 2005 that meant a client wanted a website but it needed to be driven with live data from a database, with a custom back-end they would use to update it, something that wordpress wouldn't be able to do easily. Or they wanted a data-driven Java or Flash applet embedded, dynamic resizing, or "mobile-friendly" circa 2008. I had worked for a company in 1999 making websites, split between designers (like me) whose job was to make Photoshop comps with rollover layers and split them up into tables, and the "webmonkeys" who got paid more to take that and mess with the javascript in Dreamweaver. The guys who knew how to tie that into Coldfusion or something made the most. Primitive HTML and PHP and inline javascript and mysql. I just figured out how to do all of it together. Then, web apps, multiplayer games front/back, and starting to get into logistics software. Typical gig from 2005-2010 was 9-12 months, single project stuff, hourly and freelance.

What I realized was that knowing what my software did, being able to explain every part of it and being able to rewrite it from scratch if necessary, was much more valuable than just delivering it. The powers that be who run companies are looking for communication, so they understand what they're getting, someone who can speak the same language as them and materialize it into code that works. LLMs are a decent imitation of that, but they're fatally flawed, because they never understand a whole stack.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#134

Post by moregrist »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #129
stbev wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly, a 3D software renderer. But the goal is to do (almost) everything from scratch and by hand. No LLMs, no std library, no compilers. Just a few imported math functions (such as sin and cos). Not the same as bare metal programming but close

Why would you screw yourself like that when it's already a huge project?

Why do people rebuild classic cars or remodel old houses by themselves? Because they enjoy the work itself and the learning process.

You don’t have to. It’s perfectly okay to take your modern car to a mechanic and hire a contractor for your remodeling needs.

But some people like to do it themselves, even when the project is large.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#135

Post by wtetzner »

locknitpicker wrote: post #104
estebarb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The difference is that now it is worthless Writing whole software projects in assembly has been worthless and pointless for a couple of decades now. Even the projects who can put together a solid case will limit assembly to very specific components executed only in specific bits of a hot path. Perhaps the most performance-sensitive code we have today is high frequency trading and that field is dominated by C++. Als…

The point is that these projects had worth because of what the programmer got out of the learning process, not because of the end result.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#136

Post by wartywhoa23 »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #117
estebarb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, another humane thing going to get killed, because people are naive, gullible and basically idiots handing out their expertise on a platter to faceless corpo entities. 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...

> What's next, human human contact abstracted away by brain stimulation?

Of course! Corona/junta/scarecrowvirus don't transmit over the wire, while ads, taxes and surveillance do alright!

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#137

Post by Thanemate »

vladms wrote: post #123
Thanemate wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

True if you use only chatGPT to do something and accept the generated stuff as the final output. Probably not the case for anime pictures, but in other domains, you can use chatGPT as a first level and then go on the improve it from there. To make a parallel: if you draw with a pencil on a piece of paper, you would still think of yourself a doer even if you did not manufacture your pencil or paper.

There's still personal skill expression in driving cars and using a pencil for drawing, that makes the difference between drivers and artists visible enough to justify hiring one over another.

So far I can't say the same for leveraging LLM's and, in the off-chance that there is, we have an entire software development industry that doesn't even know how to filter for "it".

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#138

Post by aurareturn »

rdevilla wrote: post #67

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.

  I mourn the death of a human artform.
So what art form can a human make with an LLM assisting?

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#139

Post by ratorx »

rdevilla wrote: post #93
menzoic wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is not that it’s “worthless”. The difference is that now it’s “practical” to implement given the low effort. I wouldn’t be sad about defeating lower complexity challenges. There are always higher complexity challenges that arise once we start operating in a world when you can do more. The bar raises.

The point is the death of the celebration of excellence and technical mastery. Once insurmountable challenges are now trivial to implement with, as you say, "low effort." For those who were attracted to computing by the grind and the grand narrative that you, too, with sufficient effort, discipline, and merit, could become a revered craftsman, LLMs trivialize an entire lifetime of practice. I can't think of anything…

If your goals were fame, then yes. But you can still pursue excellence even if there is an alternative “easy” path.

The equivalent is something like hand tool woodworking - it’s still a thing despite the advent of machines, but more of a niche. You can still aim to become excellent, but maybe you won’t be famous.

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